In this April 2, 2024 interview with Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinich says: “What’s happened is that the U.S. State Department and U.S. Government basically engineered a coup in Ukraine and used that to drag Ukraine into a conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas and ignited this war which Russia has been horrible in the way they have come in and attacked. There’s been six hundred thousand people, the flower of Ukraine, who have been killed. This thing is heartbreaking.
But we cannot ignore the role that the U.S. has played in helping to impel it, and we cannot ignore the fact that, as you point out, there was a chance to resolve this two years ago.” (He’s referring to how in March of 2022 the U.S. forced the Zelensky government to step back from a peace deal that was being negotiated with Russia.)
Kucinich says that it will be impossible for the U.S. and NATO to defeat the Russian military. “There needs to be an end to this war, an effort to repair Ukraine.” Stop this “vainglorious effort to build up NATO.” Napolitano said that the neocons Victoria Nuland, Anthony Blinken, Jake Sullivan and Joe Biden think they can use Ukraine as a battering ram to weaken Russia, but Putin is popular and the Russian economy is thriving. Napolitano says, “The war was started in 2014 by the United States with the coup, as you pointed out.” (For more details about how the U.S. engineered the war, see this. The CIA was deeply involved. Numerous senior U.S. diplomats warned that aggressive NATO expansion would lead to a war. RAND Corporation recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to weaken Russia. The U.S. government always lies about its wars.)
Napolitano asks Kucinich why all the Dems in Congress are behind the war in Ukraine. Kucinich replies that it’s partly due to the desire not to be shunned by their caucus and partly due to a desire to support the incumbent Democratic president.
Kucinich said that Senator Biden supported the disastrous war in Iraq, and the same sort of thinking that led to that war exists in the U.S. government today. Indeed, many of the same people are making policy. They’re leading us to war with Russia and in the Middle East (Gaza and possibly Iran) and are preparing for war with China. “It’s madness. It’s against the interest of the American people. It’s against the taxpayers of this country. It’s driving our national debt. It’s leading to the collapse of America, not the collapse of Russia, not the collapse of China.” Instead of trying to rule the world by military force, we should take care of our own needs.
Kucinich also condemns U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza and calls what Israel is doing “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide.” Israel bombed the Iranian embassy in Syria, also a crime according to international law. On the one hand, President Biden says Israel should not invade Rafah and should respect Palestinian lives. On the other hand, Biden gives billions of dollars of weapons. Netyanahu has got the “Biden government over a barrel because of the politics of this. And he knows that and will keep going on.” “You can’t give someone a gun who has a record of killing innocent people and say, ‘Don’t kill innocent people'” (without being complicit).
“We cannot afford to be the policeman of the world” with a $34 trillion debt.
Naopolitano (who has been interviewing a lot of lefty peace activists) ends by calling Kucinich a “fierce defender of civil liberties, constitutional government and peace.”
For more about this topic see Senior U.S. diplomats, journalists, academics and Secretaries of Defense say: The U.S. provoked Russia in Ukraine.
Donald A. Smith is a writer, a peace activist working with CodePink, a Democratic Precinct Committee Officer, the editor of http://waliberals.org, and the creator of https://progressivememes.org. He lives in Bellevue, Washington and has a PhD in Computer Science.
“He’s referring to how in March of 2022 the U.S. forced the Zelensky government to step back from a peace deal that was being negotiated with Russia.”
Not just negotiated, but a peace deal was signed by the head negotiators. They took it to Zelensky to sign, but Boris Johnson showed up and stopped it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-_ObzI6G9ZA
Signatures were on the documents. Would that not be high crime as to the rules of impeachment? To interfere in the negotiations for secession of hostilities I would think would be a qualifier.
Yes, signatures were on the documents.
Those signatures were the signatures of negotiators on a draft.
The principals did not accept the draft. Zelenskyy demanded changes, and Putin rejected those changes.
You downplay “draft”. There are no drafts in negotiations unless an agreement is reached in principle. That’s where the “initialing” takes place.
A draft is what it is — a proposal that’s not yet approved by the principals and that’s therefore not a completed deal.
Yes. But anything on that draft was discussed in complete detail with the principals before the negotiators were sent in to negotiate. That’s how negotiations work. The initialing of that draft means the negotiators, from both sides, must have been satisfied that they stayed within the parameters that the principals they were representing had set forth with them before negotiations started. They were discussing the number of troops and artillery that Ukraine would be allowed to have. So, the negotiations had progressed to the point that Ukraine was willing to allow Russia to have a say on how their military would be configured which is HUGE. I just find it difficult to believe that anything agreed upon in that draft wasn’t part of the pre negotiation meetings between Zelensky and his negotiating team.
I’m pretty sure we’ve discussed the difference between how negotiations actually work, as opposed to how you fantasize they work, before.
Yes, and you were wrong then too.
How do you know about this? Do you have a link? What changes did he demand? The Ukrainians themselves have said Boris Johnson said don’t sign, let’s go to war. We do know Zelensky signed the 2019 Peace Deal in Paris himself.
And I wonder why Boris would even bother going if Zelensky had already rejected the draft. Johnson showing up certainly brought about suspicions about meddling. Why take that chance if Zelensky was already doing what the West wanted?
Zelensky didn’t reject the draft. Zelenskyy demanded changes to the draft. Lavrov (presumably acting on behalf of Putin) rejected the changes.
It was an initialed draft. It wouldn’t have been brought back to the principals initialed if there were outstanding issues yet to be resolved. The draft was rejected.
Lavrov publicly rejected the draft (as amended by Zelenskyy to remove total Russian veto power over all future Ukrainian military exercises) the day before Johnson even arrived in Kyiv. And I’ve publicly posted the video of Lavrov doing so numerous times in these comments.
How do I know this? I watched what happened instead of just claiming that whatever was most convenient to my preferred narrative was what happened and hoping nobody else looked.
Was this after Boris J. told Zelensky to kill the deal? That’s what it sounds like because Zelensky certainly was in contact with his negotiating team and would have verbally approved the deal before it was ready for a formal signing ceremony. Please provide the link as I’ve never seen it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcCED9JOr0Y
Thanks for the link. He says Ukraine had agreed to ask Russia for permission to host foreign troops in Ukraine for training exercises. Remember this entire conflict was caused by foreign troops in Ukraine. Recall all the American bio labs in Ukraine and CIA recently bragged that it had ten posts in Ukraine near Russia’s borders long before the war.
The dates are confusing. Boris arrived in Kiev January 22 and met with Z Feb 1. After the fighting started, he had to travel 400 miles by car and it is unclear when he arrived in Kiev but we are told he met with Z April 9th, two days after this video clip.
The excuse to pull out of the agreement was blamed on the odd Bucha Massacre, an obvious fake op conducted by Ukraine and blamed on the Russians in big news April 1st. The Mayor of Bucha said there were no bodies on the streets when the Russians left and those killed were ethnic Russians.
Anyway, Zelensky must have verbally approved the draft peace deal and both the head negotiator (shown in my video) and another on video from a Swiss conference, confirmed a deal was done and killed by Boris Johnson.
“we are told he met with Z April 9th, two days after this video clip”
Exactly. The draft had been modified by Zelenskyy, and rejected by Lavrov, before Johson even arrived.
There was no confirmation that “a deal was done” by anyone, because a deal was not done. Negotiators agreeing on a draft is not a done deal.
Lavrov’s grounds for rejecting the draft changes were:
1) Disagreement over language pertaining to ceasefire lines; and
2) Ukraine rejecting a unilateral Russian veto on all Ukrainian military activities, instead wanting the permission of a majority of signatory/guarantor states.
Which terms were better or more acceptable are irrelevant to the facts of what was in the deal and who rejected it.
Exactly. The draft had been modified by Zelenskyy, and rejected by Lavrov, before Johson even arrived.
Saying Zelensky made modifications to the draft meant Zelensky rejected the draft as it was. And Lavrov rejected Zelensky’s modifications. Zelensky making modifications on the draft sounds farfetched. He could have demanded/suggested changes and sent it back to the table but for him to make changes on a negotiated draft isn’t how normal negotiations would work. You keep talking as if the negotiators went to the table without any instructions on what would be acceptable to either of the principals and the parts Zelensky rejected weren’t discussed at length beforehand.
“He could have demanded/suggested changes and sent it back to the table”
Which is what he did.
And Lavrov, on behalf of Russia, rejected those change demands, but specified that negotiations could continue.
Then Johnson arrived and Zelenskyy shut down the negotiations.
Then you should add that when you say Lavrov rejected the draft. He was rejecting the changes to the draft, not the initialed draft that left the negotiation table.
Every version prior to the final, signed agreement is a draft.
If the Russian side had offered changes — as it likely would have if Zelenskyy hadn’t offered unacceptable changes first — the version that arrived for Zelenskyy to sign or reject would also have been a draft.
Yes, two specifically different drafts. You don’t specify that when you say Lavrov rejected the draft, not Zelensky. The misleading implication being that it was one in the same draft.
I suppose that might be a “misleading implication” to someone who doesn’t understand how negotiations work.
Which would be you. You think negotiators are on their own and free to bring back to the principals whatever they damn well please.
“You think”
Why yes, I do.
If you decide to try it too, I suggest focusing your thought on what negotiations are and how they work.
I know how they work.
“He was rejecting the changes to the draft” – of course Lavrov did it because those changes contradicted the signed draft. Lavrov also said that Russia is ready to continue the negotiations. After Johnson’s visit to Kiev, Ukraine abandoned the negotiations. Only pro-Nazi Russophobes can blame Lavrov for abandoning the negotiations. The truth is: Russia never abandoned the negotiations, Ukraine did it.
The draft was not “signed” by anyone except lower level negotiators with no authority to actually conclude an agreement. Principals get to make changes to drafts; their opposing principals get to accept or reject those changes.
“After Johnson’s visit to Kiev, Ukraine abandoned the negotiations.”
Correct.
There was no signed agreement, and Johnson pressured Zelenskyy to cut off negotiations toward one.
The only point I’ve been a stickler on is that there was no agreement that Johnson magically made go away. Lavrov had rejected the draft as modified by Zelenskyy the day before Johnson arrived.
The draft was not “signed” by anyone except lower level negotiators with no authority to actually conclude an agreement.
There was no such thing as “lower level negotiators” in this scenario. But you are right about them having no authority to conclude an agreement. Negotiators never have that right. They also don’t go rogue and make agreements outside of the parameters set forth by the principals. Whatever parts of the draft Zelensky rejected were discussed thoroughly beforehand because that is how negotiations work. If his negotiators had made agreements not within those parameters than Zelensky was well withing his rights to reject them. But judging by Russia’s reaction I’m led to believe that someone besides Boris got to Zelensky and he backed off of something the negotiators were allowed to negotiate based on the parameters set forth earlier by the principals. Including Zelensky.
You’re preaching to the choir.
It wasn’t a done deal. I think there were shenanigans behind the scenes, but a draft isn’t a done deal.
I wish there were Democrats like Kucinich in the Democratic Primary challenging Biden. Marianne Williamson and Dean Philips want the war in Ukraine to continue and Williamson says she wants the war in Gaza to end but she did not say end aid to Israel.
Mr. Kucinich read the Articles of Impeachment against President George W. Bush. I watched it. It was on C-Span.
It’s always the “Russians’ brutal invasion”. Ok, an invasion is a show of force. No doubt. :-) But define a “brutal” invasion vs. the “regular” kind? What’s a country to do in this particular situation when you make a legitimate complaint and it’s ignored? You try to find peaceful solutions to an unjust action right on your border (Minsk Accords, etc.) and they basically say “yeah sure”, and then ignore that too? Going back further, it’s been our policy to undermine Russia’s efforts to succeed, ever since the end of the USSR. You think that Russia (and others) didn’t see this happening? We’ve done nothing but initiate and inflame this situation.
By Merkel’s admission, Misk was a false pretense in order for Ukraine to reload.
And Hollande and Poroshenko. So as to exclude any possibility of doubt. But Merkel I think struck a raw nerve with Putin, as he misjudged her seriousness. More than any other I think Merkel proved that absolutely no one Western politician is to be trusted about anything whatsoever. Any random Western citizen could have told him that quite a while sooner.