- The true catalyst behind the Ukraine conflict is rooted in the Ukraine government-sanctioned genocide of the Russian-speaking people of the Donbas region, according to a retired Swiss military-intelligence officer and top UN official.
Jacques Baud, a former colonel of the Swiss strategic intelligence, who specialized on Eastern European countries and served as Policy Chief for United Nations Peace Operations, explained the roots of the Ukraine-Russia war in an essay published last month in the Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement that was later translated to English in The Postil.
In his essay entitled, “The Military Situation In The Ukraine“, Baud explained the immediate situation that sparked Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was Ukraine’s accelerated artillery shelling of the Donbas region, specifically the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR).
“On 17 February, President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? It is a mystery. But since the 16th, the artillery shelling of the population of Donbass had increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show,” Baud wrote.
“Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacted or intervened. It would be said later that this was Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.”
But other conditions implemented by Western powers also laid the groundwork for an eventual military response by Russia, Baud says, including Ukraine’s commissioning of radical paramilitary groups like the Azov Battalion to carry out massacres, tortures, and rapes of the Russian-speaking Donbas people following the Soros-backed coup of Ukraine’s government in 2014.
“These militias had been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term ‘Nazi,’ the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic…[and] are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals,” Baud wrote.
Tensions with Russia sharply escalated with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelensky’s decree in March 2021 to recapture Crimea, accompanied by NATO exercises in the Black Sea, drone strike operations by Ukraine over the Donbas region in October 2021, and even reports of chemical weapon false flag efforts by CIA-backed saboteurs in the Donbas region in January 2022.
“At the same time, there were reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs, who spoke Polish and were equipped with Western equipment and who were seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could have been CIA mercenaries, led or ‘advised’ by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass Republics,” Baud noted.
This series of provocative actions prompted Russian President Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the DPR and LNR in Ukraine in early February 2022.
Baud explained that once the heavy artillery shelling of the Donbas population accelerated in February, the DNR and LNR asked Russia for military intervention, proving that Ukraine actually started the war on February 16, days before Russia invaded, which was hidden by Western media.
The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued, and, on 23 February, the two Republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.
In order to make the Russian intervention seem totally illegal in the eyes of the public, Western powers deliberately hid the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware.
In sum, the United States, France and the European Union “have created the conditions for a conflict to break out,” Baud claimed.
“We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That is fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and who sought refuge in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened,” Baud wrote.
Despite the West’s push for war, Baud predicts Putin will likely achieve his military objectives.
“In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself. We have pushed him into the arms of China. His ties with Beijing have solidified,” Baud wrote. “China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in — and the United States has to piteously backtrack on the sanctions imposed on its enemies.”
But don’t expect the mainstream media to offer an honest assessment of the Ukraine conflict: they, in conjunction with their war hawk politician allies, wanted war all along.
