Jonathan Cook, journalist
Forget 'madman Putin'. Dozens of cables exposed by Wikileaks show US officials warning for years of a Russian consensus – 'among policymakers, experts and the informed population' – against continued Nato expansion. Ukraine was the 'brightest of red lines'.
Cables from 2008 concern Nato officials pressing reticent Ukrainian leaders to declare support for Nato membership, and discussing how to persuade Ukraine’s population to 'be more favorable' toward joining. Public education campaigns in Ukraine followed.
William Burns, now Biden's CIA chief, warned in 2008: 'Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over Nato membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war.'
Civil war in Ukraine is, of course, exactly what happened from 2014 onwards as the predicted tensions surfaced under US-Nato pressure. In his cable, Burns continued that Russia would then 'have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face'.
The Wikileaks cables show conclusively that US officials ignored all those warnings, strong-armed Ukraine into ever closer cooperation with Nato, helped stoke a civil war, and crossed Russia's brightest of red lines.
And now Washington is playing the part of Ukraine's saviour.
The forgotten story here is the western media. How is all this information - on the record care of Wikileaks, and directly sourced to US, Nato, European officials – simply memory-holed in the current coverage of Ukraine.
It's almost as if our media are gaslighting us.
