Why Russia Hasn’t Invaded Ukraine | Thick Toast
The United States engages in lies to justify its actions abroad. A notable example of this is the underwhelming proof it provided that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After 2.4 trillion dollars spent and over a million deaths, we all know how that ended.
This proof is a prerequisite for US aggression, is a pretense for invasion, and is typically fabricated. Take, for instance, Syria. The goal of the United States: invade Syria. The pretense for war: chemical weapons. However, Putin brilliantly deescalated this volatile situation by interceding on behalf of Assad, thus thwarting the real US goal of starting war in Syria. Not to be bested, the US invented another pre-text for Syria invasion: ISIS. But I digress, the point is that in order to interfere with other countries, the US will fabricate an onus for initiating hostilities.
False Pretense For Meddling in Ukraine
Like George W Bush saying terrorists “hate us because we’re free”, the Ukraine version of this cheesy, illogical pretext-for-war-building is “Putin wants to rebuild the former Soviet Union and annex Ukraine.” It’s a lie. It doesn’t stand up to logic. That’s why I give you the top 5 reasons why Putin has not, and will not invade Ukraine.
#1: Occam’s Razor
From wikipedia:
The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.
Use of Occam’s Razor is debate 101, and since we’re in a debate here, I’m going to invoke it. If you’re not used to dealing with it, let me give you a simple example. You’re hungry. Why are you hungry? Maybe a leprechaun hijacked an alien’s flying saucer and crash landed in your back yard, and needs to find a new power source which just happens to be the pizza you ate last night, and used a teleporter beam to extract the pizza you ate before sleep, making you hungry. Or maybe you’re hungry because you haven’t eaten yet today. Which is the most likely? The one with the fewest assumptions.
Lets apply Occam’s Razor to the question, “Does Russia want to invade Ukraine? The assumption: Russia wants to invade Ukraine. Putin says he doesn’t want to. To say otherwise, is to assume that Putin is lying. (This makes 2 assumptions, 1: Putin wants to invade, and 2: he is lying about it).
hollandeWhat does Europe have to say about it? Hollande of France says Putin doesn’t want to annex Eastern Ukraine. This is a leader who has spent much time sitting with Putin in meetings, discussing Ukraine and trying to work out a solution. I should also state that this is something that Obama has NOT done. Who should you give the benefit of the doubt, a world leader who has actually met with Putin to discuss these issues, or one who has not? Again, the logical conclusion would be that Hollande is in a better position to know, and to assume otherwise is to assume Obama knows better having not spent as much time with Putin in finding a solution, yet another assumption working against Occam’s Razor.
#2: It Hasn’t Happened
If Russia wanted to invade Ukraine and annex the Donbass area, why hasn’t it done so? Lets examine possible reasons:
It’s afraid of sanctions. I hate to be captain obvious, but that didn’t stop Russia from allowing the Crimea area to hold a referendum and decide to peacefully rejoin the Russian Federation, did it? Well, did it? The assumption you would have to make is that Russia is not afraid enough of sanctions to allow Crimea to rejoin, but it is too afraid of sanctions that it will not allow the Donbass area to do the same. It makes no sense, and to force it to make sense runs against Occam’s Razor (least amount of assumptions).
The Russian Federation is militarily unable to take Kiev. I was hesitant to even list this option, but there are certainly some ultra-Nationalistic Kiev sympathizers out there who think that Ukraine is a formidable match for war against Russia. Putin said, if he really wanted to, he could take Kiev in 2 weeks. This was before Poroshenko ground his army into a bloody stub of its former self, so pro-rating the situation, perhaps it would only be 1 week now. He has still not done so.
There’s no evidence. After one year anniversary of Maiden in Kiev, there is literally no evidence of Russian involvement. In a joint press conference, Merkel and Hollande said there’s no evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine, nor any Russian crossings at the border. In the previous linked article, I delve into this question exhaustively, showing how shoddy and illegitimate US evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine is.
#3: It’s against Russian Interests
Would you be surprised if I told you that NATO works diligently to expand its influence? Examine the photo below for a moment.
This photo portrays the real situation on the ground since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Who is the aggressor? Putin’s Russia, or NATO’s Europe? Countries do not simply “switch sides”, the US has invested billions of dollars, through non government organizations (NGOs) installed in each country to wage propaganda. Pro-western candidates are propped up, pro-Russian governments are overthrown.
What would happen if Russia invaded, and annexed the Donbass region? The remainder of Ukraine (some sharing a border with Russia) would then be all that more empowered to rush into NATO without Donbass region voters to prohibit it. US military rockets could literally be placed within a few hundred kilometer of Moscow.
Let me digress here for a moment, and discuss “US exceptionalism”. Back in the 60’s the US cited the Monroe Doctrine to keep Russian missiles out of Cuba. A paraphrase of the Monroe Doctrine would be “If you even think about doing anything in the entire western hemisphere, Russia, we’ll nuke your ***, period.” In response to that, I’d like to pose a simple question: is it in the national security interest of Russia to keep NATO missiles off its border? Answer: hell yes. If you think otherwise, you’ve been drinking the “US is exceptional” koolaid.
Who has more of a vested interest in Ukraine? A country who for centuries consisted of most of Ukraine borders, who has been a trade partner, sister state in the Soviet Union, and generally tied to Ukraine by geography, language and culture? Or a country completely on the other side of the world, does not share same language, culture, whose citizens can’t even identify Ukraine on a map, and somehow went through most of its existence without ever confessing that Ukraine was strategically important to its national security in any way? (That is, of course, the United States).
Does Russia have a legitimate national security interest in promoting stability in its sister state of Ukraine? Yes. What happens if Russia annexes a little portion of it, allowing the rest of the Ukraine to gravitate to Europe (including a large stretch that remains on Russia’s border)? It’ll join NATO. Does leaving the Donbass region in Ukraine help even out the country enough to prevent it from joining NATO? Yes. Therefore, it is against Russia’s national security interest to annex the Donbass region.
#4: Russia Largest Country, Doesn’t Need More Territory
Again, I am being Captain Obvious. The point #3 above ended commenting on adding a “little area of Ukraine”. I can thoroughly explain why the US and all of Europe would like to get its grubby little fingers over the Ukraine, to plunder its resources. I’d like to share a video below that I originally found on Saker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=68RErgHOzN8
The video above recounts what’s at stake in the Ukraine, how there are literally trillions of dollars wound up in oil, coal and other natural resources. These are all resources that Russia has in plenty, and makes a bundle selling to Europe. EU, on the other hand, doesn’t have access to these types of resources. This is the foundation for the IMF loans to Ukraine, and the attempt to rip Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and into the EU.
EU and US would love nothing more than for Ukraine to be a failed state, buying its resources for pennies on the dollar from fat oligarchs, while all of Ukraine is forced into the most severe austerity to keep the pro-Western Kiev junta in power.
Speaking of oligarchs in Ukraine, the US really doesn’t even make a token effort to hide its conflicts of interests. It used to be that the US went all-out in pulling off false-flags in order to justify wars. Nowadays, it gets by with killing a few Americans in high resolution studio made videos.
In lawsuits, a judge is supposed to recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest in determining the outcome of the lawsuit. Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent the executive branch, where US vice-president Joe Biden’s son Hunter becomes a top official in Burisma Holdings, the largest gas company in Ukraine. Average Americans should be disgusted that their country spends billions of dollars to subvert a country and empower a sort of corporate oligarch nepotism of the president and his cronies. Its well known in the mafia that illegitimate payments are often made to relatives of the mobsters.
Russia, on the other hand, doesn’t need it. It is the largest country in the world. It has the largest proven gas reserves in the world (interestingly enough, Iran has the 2nd largest, see the pattern of US interest in who they pick fights with?). It has a stake in the arctic, where there is yet more vast resources. Arguing that Russia needs Ukraine’s Donbass region for its resources is illogical and insincere.
#5: Evidence Points the United States is Lying
Liar in Chief graphic courtesy of Ben Garrison of GRR Graphics.
This article started out with asking the question, why would Russia want to invade Ukraine? Where’s the proof? Where is the smoking bullet, the photos, the tape recording of Putin saying this is his intention, anything? Now a year after the coup d’etat in Kiev, there is nothing. Kiev apologists love posting pictures of “Russian” tanks. In the last 24 hours, Ukraine army representitive Lysenko was claiming that Russia sent 20 more tanks over the border (from which Merkel and Hollande held a press conference over stating Lysenko is full of it). The truth is that from Debaltseve, the Donetsk People’s Republic received over 80 tanks from Ukraine, along with an “incalculable amount of ammo“.
Lets, however, reverse the scenario and ask other questions, like “Is there any proof the US may be lying?”
As referenced in the video above, Obama acknowledged that the US brokered a transition of power between Yanukovich and the Maidan rebels. This admission by Obama that the US has overthrown a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and replaced it with a military coup junta, shows the US is not clean as it makes accusations against Russia.
Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs who infamously was quoted saying “**** the EU” in a conversation where US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt eagerly agreed, was caught stating that the US has spent over 5 billion dollars in “bringing democracy” to the Ukraine. Watch the video below.
How does one spend 5 billion dollars to “bring democracy” to Ukraine? The answer is simple. Funding opposition candidates, funding news organizations which function as propaganda and only telling one side of the story, and what of the violent coup d’etat itself? It’s fairly well proven that the US has no qualms killing people in order to achieve its geopolitical goals in the world. Regime change is the number one US export.
US and NATO aggresion. Take a look at the map below. This map shows all of NATOs bases around Russia.
russia-wants-war
The United Stats has confirmed a military buildup along Russia’s border. This is where the real arrogance, the extremism of US exceptionalism comes into play. Can you imagine Russia intervening with the drug cartels in Mexico? Or, amassing troops along the Rio Grande under the pretense of protecting Mexican civilians swimming across to the US? That sounds far fetched, and of course it would never happen — because Russia is a non-interventionalist country, but if Russia WAS doing that, it would be no different than what the US is doing worldwide. Can you imagine how Washington would respond if Russia did this?
In summary, Russia has absolutely no desire in empire building. Meanwhile, regime change and empire building is exactly what the US engages in as a primary foreign policy. It is time for US exceptionalism to end. They are all faux concerns spewed by US officials, the real game that Washington plays is subverting all countries that have bountiful stores of natural resources that can be had at pennies on the dollar.
The United States engages in lies to justify its actions abroad. A notable example of this is the underwhelming proof it provided that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. After 2.4 trillion dollars spent and over a million deaths, we all know how that ended.
This proof is a prerequisite for US aggression, is a pretense for invasion, and is typically fabricated. Take, for instance, Syria. The goal of the United States: invade Syria. The pretense for war: chemical weapons. However, Putin brilliantly deescalated this volatile situation by interceding on behalf of Assad, thus thwarting the real US goal of starting war in Syria. Not to be bested, the US invented another pre-text for Syria invasion: ISIS. But I digress, the point is that in order to interfere with other countries, the US will fabricate an onus for initiating hostilities.
False Pretense For Meddling in Ukraine
Like George W Bush saying terrorists “hate us because we’re free”, the Ukraine version of this cheesy, illogical pretext-for-war-building is “Putin wants to rebuild the former Soviet Union and annex Ukraine.” It’s a lie. It doesn’t stand up to logic. That’s why I give you the top 5 reasons why Putin has not, and will not invade Ukraine.
#1: Occam’s Razor
From wikipedia:
The principle states that among competing hypotheses, the one with the fewest assumptions should be selected. Other, more complicated solutions may ultimately prove correct, but—in the absence of certainty—the fewer assumptions that are made, the better.
Use of Occam’s Razor is debate 101, and since we’re in a debate here, I’m going to invoke it. If you’re not used to dealing with it, let me give you a simple example. You’re hungry. Why are you hungry? Maybe a leprechaun hijacked an alien’s flying saucer and crash landed in your back yard, and needs to find a new power source which just happens to be the pizza you ate last night, and used a teleporter beam to extract the pizza you ate before sleep, making you hungry. Or maybe you’re hungry because you haven’t eaten yet today. Which is the most likely? The one with the fewest assumptions.
Lets apply Occam’s Razor to the question, “Does Russia want to invade Ukraine? The assumption: Russia wants to invade Ukraine. Putin says he doesn’t want to. To say otherwise, is to assume that Putin is lying. (This makes 2 assumptions, 1: Putin wants to invade, and 2: he is lying about it).
hollandeWhat does Europe have to say about it? Hollande of France says Putin doesn’t want to annex Eastern Ukraine. This is a leader who has spent much time sitting with Putin in meetings, discussing Ukraine and trying to work out a solution. I should also state that this is something that Obama has NOT done. Who should you give the benefit of the doubt, a world leader who has actually met with Putin to discuss these issues, or one who has not? Again, the logical conclusion would be that Hollande is in a better position to know, and to assume otherwise is to assume Obama knows better having not spent as much time with Putin in finding a solution, yet another assumption working against Occam’s Razor.
#2: It Hasn’t Happened
If Russia wanted to invade Ukraine and annex the Donbass area, why hasn’t it done so? Lets examine possible reasons:
It’s afraid of sanctions. I hate to be captain obvious, but that didn’t stop Russia from allowing the Crimea area to hold a referendum and decide to peacefully rejoin the Russian Federation, did it? Well, did it? The assumption you would have to make is that Russia is not afraid enough of sanctions to allow Crimea to rejoin, but it is too afraid of sanctions that it will not allow the Donbass area to do the same. It makes no sense, and to force it to make sense runs against Occam’s Razor (least amount of assumptions).
The Russian Federation is militarily unable to take Kiev. I was hesitant to even list this option, but there are certainly some ultra-Nationalistic Kiev sympathizers out there who think that Ukraine is a formidable match for war against Russia. Putin said, if he really wanted to, he could take Kiev in 2 weeks. This was before Poroshenko ground his army into a bloody stub of its former self, so pro-rating the situation, perhaps it would only be 1 week now. He has still not done so.
There’s no evidence. After one year anniversary of Maiden in Kiev, there is literally no evidence of Russian involvement. In a joint press conference, Merkel and Hollande said there’s no evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine, nor any Russian crossings at the border. In the previous linked article, I delve into this question exhaustively, showing how shoddy and illegitimate US evidence of Russian involvement in Ukraine is.
#3: It’s against Russian Interests
Would you be surprised if I told you that NATO works diligently to expand its influence? Examine the photo below for a moment.
This photo portrays the real situation on the ground since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991. Who is the aggressor? Putin’s Russia, or NATO’s Europe? Countries do not simply “switch sides”, the US has invested billions of dollars, through non government organizations (NGOs) installed in each country to wage propaganda. Pro-western candidates are propped up, pro-Russian governments are overthrown.
What would happen if Russia invaded, and annexed the Donbass region? The remainder of Ukraine (some sharing a border with Russia) would then be all that more empowered to rush into NATO without Donbass region voters to prohibit it. US military rockets could literally be placed within a few hundred kilometer of Moscow.
Let me digress here for a moment, and discuss “US exceptionalism”. Back in the 60’s the US cited the Monroe Doctrine to keep Russian missiles out of Cuba. A paraphrase of the Monroe Doctrine would be “If you even think about doing anything in the entire western hemisphere, Russia, we’ll nuke your ***, period.” In response to that, I’d like to pose a simple question: is it in the national security interest of Russia to keep NATO missiles off its border? Answer: hell yes. If you think otherwise, you’ve been drinking the “US is exceptional” koolaid.
Who has more of a vested interest in Ukraine? A country who for centuries consisted of most of Ukraine borders, who has been a trade partner, sister state in the Soviet Union, and generally tied to Ukraine by geography, language and culture? Or a country completely on the other side of the world, does not share same language, culture, whose citizens can’t even identify Ukraine on a map, and somehow went through most of its existence without ever confessing that Ukraine was strategically important to its national security in any way? (That is, of course, the United States).
Does Russia have a legitimate national security interest in promoting stability in its sister state of Ukraine? Yes. What happens if Russia annexes a little portion of it, allowing the rest of the Ukraine to gravitate to Europe (including a large stretch that remains on Russia’s border)? It’ll join NATO. Does leaving the Donbass region in Ukraine help even out the country enough to prevent it from joining NATO? Yes. Therefore, it is against Russia’s national security interest to annex the Donbass region.
#4: Russia Largest Country, Doesn’t Need More Territory
Again, I am being Captain Obvious. The point #3 above ended commenting on adding a “little area of Ukraine”. I can thoroughly explain why the US and all of Europe would like to get its grubby little fingers over the Ukraine, to plunder its resources. I’d like to share a video below that I originally found on Saker:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=68RErgHOzN8
The video above recounts what’s at stake in the Ukraine, how there are literally trillions of dollars wound up in oil, coal and other natural resources. These are all resources that Russia has in plenty, and makes a bundle selling to Europe. EU, on the other hand, doesn’t have access to these types of resources. This is the foundation for the IMF loans to Ukraine, and the attempt to rip Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and into the EU.
EU and US would love nothing more than for Ukraine to be a failed state, buying its resources for pennies on the dollar from fat oligarchs, while all of Ukraine is forced into the most severe austerity to keep the pro-Western Kiev junta in power.
Speaking of oligarchs in Ukraine, the US really doesn’t even make a token effort to hide its conflicts of interests. It used to be that the US went all-out in pulling off false-flags in order to justify wars. Nowadays, it gets by with killing a few Americans in high resolution studio made videos.
In lawsuits, a judge is supposed to recuse themselves if they have a conflict of interest in determining the outcome of the lawsuit. Unfortunately, that doesn’t prevent the executive branch, where US vice-president Joe Biden’s son Hunter becomes a top official in Burisma Holdings, the largest gas company in Ukraine. Average Americans should be disgusted that their country spends billions of dollars to subvert a country and empower a sort of corporate oligarch nepotism of the president and his cronies. Its well known in the mafia that illegitimate payments are often made to relatives of the mobsters.
Russia, on the other hand, doesn’t need it. It is the largest country in the world. It has the largest proven gas reserves in the world (interestingly enough, Iran has the 2nd largest, see the pattern of US interest in who they pick fights with?). It has a stake in the arctic, where there is yet more vast resources. Arguing that Russia needs Ukraine’s Donbass region for its resources is illogical and insincere.
#5: Evidence Points the United States is Lying
Liar in Chief graphic courtesy of Ben Garrison of GRR Graphics.
This article started out with asking the question, why would Russia want to invade Ukraine? Where’s the proof? Where is the smoking bullet, the photos, the tape recording of Putin saying this is his intention, anything? Now a year after the coup d’etat in Kiev, there is nothing. Kiev apologists love posting pictures of “Russian” tanks. In the last 24 hours, Ukraine army representitive Lysenko was claiming that Russia sent 20 more tanks over the border (from which Merkel and Hollande held a press conference over stating Lysenko is full of it). The truth is that from Debaltseve, the Donetsk People’s Republic received over 80 tanks from Ukraine, along with an “incalculable amount of ammo“.
Lets, however, reverse the scenario and ask other questions, like “Is there any proof the US may be lying?”
As referenced in the video above, Obama acknowledged that the US brokered a transition of power between Yanukovich and the Maidan rebels. This admission by Obama that the US has overthrown a democratically elected government in Ukraine, and replaced it with a military coup junta, shows the US is not clean as it makes accusations against Russia.
Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs who infamously was quoted saying “**** the EU” in a conversation where US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt eagerly agreed, was caught stating that the US has spent over 5 billion dollars in “bringing democracy” to the Ukraine. Watch the video below.
How does one spend 5 billion dollars to “bring democracy” to Ukraine? The answer is simple. Funding opposition candidates, funding news organizations which function as propaganda and only telling one side of the story, and what of the violent coup d’etat itself? It’s fairly well proven that the US has no qualms killing people in order to achieve its geopolitical goals in the world. Regime change is the number one US export.
US and NATO aggresion. Take a look at the map below. This map shows all of NATOs bases around Russia.
russia-wants-war
The United Stats has confirmed a military buildup along Russia’s border. This is where the real arrogance, the extremism of US exceptionalism comes into play. Can you imagine Russia intervening with the drug cartels in Mexico? Or, amassing troops along the Rio Grande under the pretense of protecting Mexican civilians swimming across to the US? That sounds far fetched, and of course it would never happen — because Russia is a non-interventionalist country, but if Russia WAS doing that, it would be no different than what the US is doing worldwide. Can you imagine how Washington would respond if Russia did this?
In summary, Russia has absolutely no desire in empire building. Meanwhile, regime change and empire building is exactly what the US engages in as a primary foreign policy. It is time for US exceptionalism to end. They are all faux concerns spewed by US officials, the real game that Washington plays is subverting all countries that have bountiful stores of natural resources that can be had at pennies on the dollar.
