Trump vs. Zelensky, Part 1

The Origins of the Ukraine War

On Monday, March 3^rd, it was announced that the United States had suspended all military aid to Ukraine on the orders of President Donald Trump. This decision followed a rather unusual and heated confrontation at the White House on the previous Friday. The participants were Ukraine’s President Volodymr Zelensky, Trump, and Vice-President J. D. Vance. What was so odd about this somewhat candid and argumentative discussion is that it took place in public; the media was in attendance and allowed to ask questions. Usually a discussion as oppositional as this one would take place behind closed doors.

The occasion for this visit was for Zelensky to sign a minerals rights deal with Washington. This was in order to begin to return the 175 billion dollars in total aid that America has given Ukraine in the past several years. The affair ended so acrimoniously that Zelensky was ushered out of the White House-- without signing the agreement. On the intervening Sunday, Zelensky insisted that he was still ready to sign, but any agreement to end the Russia/Ukraine war was still “very, very far away.” (The Morning Dispatch, 3/4/25)

To top off this dispute, also on March 3^rd, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth directed American offensive cyber operations against Russia to be paused. This move was aimed at helping to bring Moscow to the negotiating table for talks ending the Ukraine War. (ibid)

The flare-up in the White House was based on what appears to be a desire to change policy in Ukraine. Vance criticized President Joe Biden for not pursuing diplomacy to end the war. The Vice-President continued by saying that this was now necessary since Ukraine was having difficulty in recruiting soldiers to fight on the front. Zelensky said something odd in reply to this. He stated everybody has problems during a war, but the USA has an ocean in between so they do not feel it now, but will feel it in the future. Trump took offense at this. He said Zelensky should not tell Americans how to feel, because he was in no position to dictate that, since he did not have any cards to play. When Zelensky said he was not playing cards, Trump replied with “You’re gambling with the lives of millions of people. You’re gambling with World War III.”

This went on for a few minutes in similar topic and tone. (See transcript, The Independent, 3/3/25) Zelensky was trying to say how his country was facing a Russian onslaught alone. Trump and Vance replied that without American aid, Ukraine was helpless. Therefore diplomacy should be practiced.

What was missing from the cacophony was any reference to how the war started. In fact, almost the entire American press wishes to ignore this aspect. To be accurate and complete—and a point most wish to sidestep--the war did not begin with the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of 2022. The war had been going on for quite a long time before that. One reason was that the Kiev regime wanted everyone in the country to speak Ukrainian; even though most people in the Donbas region, in east Ukraine, were Russian speakers. (Scott Horton, Provoked, p. 621, all notes to e book version). Protests now began in the provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in spring of 2014. At the time, these were based on the issue of autonomy, not full independence. The protests grew increasingly violent and the demonstrators occupied government buildings. As the violence continued and worsened, the protestors now wished to declare a new Donetsk People’s Republic.

Escalating the conflict, in April of 2014 Kiev sent in 700 combat troops, 20 armored personnel carriers and four helicopters to attack the protestors. (Horton, p. 641). On May 12^th a referendum passed overwhelmingly in favor of “people’s republics” in Donetsk and Luhansk. (The Guardian, 5/12/14, story by Shaun Walker) After this, the leaders there asked to join the Russian federation, but Russian president Vladimir Putin said no. (Horton, p. 650) By the summer there were shooting skirmishes and the residents had forcibly seized the state security agency building.

This was the real beginning of the Ukraine War. In fact, almost immediately when this broke out, there were defections among Ukraine’s troops and an unwillingness to fight by those who remained. Kiev now had to order a compulsory draft; forcing these men to fight under duress: the penalty being criminal conviction. (NBC News, 5/1/14, story by Marina Stromova)

The war in Donbas continued all the way to the Russian invasion in 2022 and beyond. By 2022, there were, conservatively speaking, at least 14,000 casualties. (BBC report of 2/23/22). Other sources place the count much higher, at 14,400 killed and 39,000 injured or wounded. (Horton, p. 710)

Ukraine’s army consistently assaulted civilian areas, with not just artillery and bombing from the air, but with banned cluster bombs. (NY Times, 10/20/14, report by Andrew Roth). In fact, this practice was the rule rather than the exception. In addition to civilian targeting, the UN rapporteur stated that terrorism tactics were used by Ukraine, i.e. secret detention and summary killings. And the Defense Ministry forbade inquiries into any of this. (UN Official statement by Christian Heyns of 9/18/15). The civilian bombing got so extensive that, in just six months, 250,000 people had been displaced. (CNN report of 9/2/14 by Diana Magnay and Laura Smith-Spark). The Ukraine army also used another banned weapon, phosphorus; killed reporters and literally set a city ablaze after surrounding it with barbed wire. (Horton, p. 688)

But yet all this did not cure the problem. It backfired on Ukraine. Donbas now wanted a Russian annexation from their former Ukrainian brothers. (Horton, p. 692) And, in fact, much of the weaponry used by the Donbas armies was made up of “entire tank, artillery or anti-aircraft battallions” defecting to their side. (Report by NATO analyst Jacques Baud; NPR story of 4/16/14 by Mark Memmott) An article by RAND’s Samuel Charap stated that Ukraine had been fighting local armies for the entire conflict in the Donbas, with only two exceptions. The Russians only interceded twice, once in the autumn of 2014 and once in early 2015. And in those two instances, they did so in limited roles. (Article by Charap, Foreign Policy, 1/21/22)

The first Russian intervention was at Ilovaisk, and it helped inflict a defeat for Ukraine. That loss was so resounding that it caused peace talks in Belarus between Ukraine, France, Germany and Russia. This ended up being called Minsk I. The truce did not take hold.

After a second Ukraine defeat at Debaltseve--again with limited Russian help--there was another meeting concerning a truce; it included the same participants This was held in February of 2015, also in Belarus. It was labeled Minsk II. The legislature of Ukraine, called the Rada, formally killed it. (Horton, p. 701). But Germany’s leader at the time, Angela Merkel, later admitted that these agreements were not meant to hold. They were designed to buy time for Ukraine to strengthen itself. (Die Zeit, interview with Merkel, 12/7/22). In other words, as long as allies had their backs, Ukraine was willing to continue fighting in the Donbas, thus increasing the probability that Russia would enter the war large scale. It continued despite the fact that a plebiscite had been passed saying Donetsk and Luhansk did not wish to be part of Ukraine anymore. What makes it worse is that Vice-President Joe Biden went to Ukraine and said that Russia must return all of Donbas to Kiev, in spite of what the citizenry wanted. (Horton, p. 708)

That Biden did this was a harbinger of what Ukraine policy was going to be once he became president. President Obama did not want to escalate with large amounts of American weaponry. He thought this would be answered by an increasing and dangerous spiral by Russia; although he did relent on this midway through his presidency.(Horton, p. 646, p. 738).

There was some hope that when Trump won the White House in 2016 this rising wave of destruction in Cold War 2 would somehow be foreshortened. But that hope was more or less negated by the ersatz Russiagate scandal, which raged on for about three years. It was exacerbated by the FBI cooperation with Twitter, which was finally exposed when Elon Musk purchased that popular site. (Alan MacLeod, Mintpress News, 6/21/22) At least nine people associated with the FBI were directed to remove any threads opposing confrontation and/or demonizing of Russia. Writers likes Jeff Gerth, Matt Taibibi and Aaron Mate then wrote and spoke about this secret FBI/Twitter cooperation. (See for example Mate in Grayzone, 6/7/23) Since the Washington establishment did not like this exposure, Taibibi was called before congress. And on that day he got a visit from the IRS. (Real News Network, report by Chris Hedges, 6/23/23) There was actually a court case that touched on this phony scandal. It took place in Missouri and was entitled State of Missouri v. Joseph R. Biden. The White House did not do well in the judge’s eyes. (Judge Terry Dougherty’s 155 page decision was filed on 7/4/23)

Russiagate was originally intended to take pressure off of Hillary Clinton and her email problems. It was false from its inception. For, as later revealed, there was no proof that Moscow hacked the DNC server, thus stealing internal communications from Clinton and her advisors. That failing was covered up by representative Adam Schiff. (Aaron Mate, RealClear Investigations, 5/13/20) What made this lacuna even worse was the fact that Director James Comey and the FBI never had direct access to the server itself, even after making several requests at more than one level. (ibid).

It was the Democratic campaign firm lawyer, Mike Sussmann, who hired Crowdstrike, the tech company which refused to turn over the server, and then concealed the actual results. Sussman was also involved with Christopher Steele in producing his infamous and discredited dossier on Trump. (ibid) As Mate revealed, this key information was not declassified until 2018.

But Russiagate had two side effects. One was to smear Trump as some kind of Moscow sympathizer or, even worse, a mole. The other was a declension from that point: any attempt to get a truce agreement in Ukraine would bolster that smear of him. In effect, what Trump is trying to do now was tempered back then by Russiagate.

What makes this all a bit worse is this: those involved in pushing the Russiagate angle were aware that it was mythological. For instance, FBI official Peter Strzok admitted that they had tried to find evidence of any kind of prior relations between the Trump administration and Russian higher ups, “But there is no known affiliation.” (Horton, p. 759) When James Comey was asked about a suggestive story in the NY Times that said there was, he testified, “in the main, it was not true.” (Michael Schmidt, NY Times 6/8/17). In fact, Strzok once wrote he was not eager to join the inquiry since he had already concluded “There’s no big there there.” (NY Post, 1/23/18, report by Mark Moore).

When the FBI created a chart to cross check the Steele Dossier, none of it held up, and the CIA concluded the same. (The Hill, 7/16/19 report by John Solomon; Horowitz Report by DOJ of 12/19) In fact, some of it was clearly manufactured. For example, Carter Page was not a Trump campaign employee working for the Russians, he was a CIA asset. (Horton, pp.763, 788) It was later revealed that the Clinton campaign was actually paying for the Steele Dossier. Upon that discovery, Maggie Haberman wrote that “Folks involved in funding this lied about it, and with sanctimony, for a year.” (ibid, p. 764)

Later, the higher ups in the Obama administration admitted they never saw any credible evidence of any untoward Russian influence with Trump. This included former DNI James Clapper, Deputy AG Sally Yates, Secretary of State Susan Rice. (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence hearings of July 17, and September 8, 2017)

But there was a fallback. Somehow, Trump was compromised by the Russians since 1987. The evidence: Trump had visited Russia in 1987. (Jonathan Chait, New York magazine, 7/8/18). This wild theory is now resurfacing in the wake of the Zelensky/Trump faceoff. This is how powerful, almost amphetamine-like, the media addiction to Zelensky and the war with Russia has become. If only it was that simple and patriotic. But as we shall see, in addition to the almost unnoticed war in Donbas, there was another aspect motivating Russia.