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Can we please stop saying the Ukraine war was “unprovoked”?
With the startling admissions from Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko, the evidence now is overwhelming that the West has been planning and provoking the war in Ukraine for many years.
When President Vladimir Putin launched his ”Special Military Operation” in February 2022, the Western media all announced in unison that the invasion was “unprovoked”. The White House immediately issued a statement calling the SMO an “unprovoked and unjustified attack”, and that “Russia alone is responsible for the death and destruction this attack will bring”.
It quickly became apparent that a memo had gone out, instructing all Western media, pundits and politicians that they must ALWAYS insert the word “unprovoked“ when discussing the conflict.
As the media analysis organisation FAIR noted at the time:
It’s a word that has been echoed repeatedly across the media ecosystem. “Putin’s forces entered Ukraine’s second-largest city on the fourth day of the unprovoked invasion,” Axios (2/27/22) reported; “Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine entered its second week Friday,” said CNBC (3/4/22). Vox (3/1/22) wrote of “Putin’s decision to launch an unprovoked and unnecessary war with the second-largest country in Europe.”
The battle lines of the propaganda war had been drawn: on one side, the West was characterising Russia’s move as “unprovoked and unnecessary”; on the other side, Russia was maintaining that the SMO was the result of many years of provocation, and the action was indeed necessary to ensure Russia’s security.
The First Betrayal: NATO Expansion
Perhaps the most important, pervasive and possibly the most long-standing provocation that Russia has endured from the West is the matter of NATO expansion.
Many readers will have heard the famous story of the Western diplomats promising Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not be expanded. I have been in many…
