The West Pushed Ukraine To War And Kiev Now Is Paying The Butcher’s Bill

The Butcher’s Bill painting

This is a follow up to my previous piece describing how the United States and NATO sabotaged the peace talks between Russia and Ukraine in March 2022. Within the last week we have two members of Ukraine’s negotiating team confirm the information that was published two weeks ago by Hajo Funke and Harald Kujat, Harald Kujat is not just some guy with an opinion. He was the head of Germany’s military. The two members of the Ukrainian team — Oleksiy Arestovich (Zelensky’s former righthand man) and David Arakhamia (a Zelensky look alike who is a member of the Rada).

Vladimir Putin was the first person to publicly describe what happened with the negotiations when he met with an African delegation in July 2023. Putin told the African leaders:

“Russia has never refused negotiations. A whole series of negotiations between Russia and Ukraine took place in Turkey to develop confidence-building measures and prepare the text of the treaty itself.

The head of the negotiating team from Kiev initialed this draft agreement. Here he is. It is called the “Treaty on Permanent Neutrality and Security Guarantees for Ukraine.” 18 articles.

Moreover, there is also an application for it. This applies to the armed forces and other things. Everything is spelled out, down to the units of military equipment and the personnel of the armed forces. Here is this document. And it was initialed by the Kiev delegation.

But after we, as promised, withdrew the troops from Kiev, the Kiev authorities, as their masters usually do, threw it all into the dustbin of history. Let’s put it this way carefully and intelligently.”

Arestovich, who is now on the outs with Zelensky, makes the strongest statement:

David Arakhamia is a bit more circumspect until the final sentence of this clip. Arakhamia claims Ukraine did not go forward because they did not trust the Russians even though Putin showed the document and the signatures during his meeting with the Africans. But Arakhamia drops the bombshell at the end — Boris Johnson told Zelensky not to sign and to “make war.”

It is now clear that the so-called Bucha Massacre was ginned up by Ukraine’s Intelligence service and the Brits to create a pretext for Ukraine’s withdrawal from the peace talks. Here is what I wrote about Bucha in April 2022:

This brings us to the latest “atrocity” Ukraine insists was carried out by Russia–Bucha, a suburb of Kiev. Here is The Guardian’s account:

As Ukrainian armoured columns rolled into Bucha, a town north-west of the capital, they found streets blocked by burned-out Russian tanks and military vehicles, and strewn with the bodies of civilians whom locals said had been killed by the invading forces without provocation.

Here’s the problem. Bucha was declared ‘completely liberated’ of Russian troops by its mayor on Thursday, March 31. The dead lying in the streets are all wearing a white arm band, which is worn by Ukrainians to signal to Russian troops they are not backing the Ukrainian Army.

If the city was liberated on 31 March why are the bodies still lying in place three days later? Why were they not gathered up by grieving relatives? This report is having the predicable effect in the West–pundits and politicians are demanding a NATO military response. Russia is not fazed by this latest propaganda barb; it is calling for an emergency meeting of the UN Security Council to present evidence refuting the charge.

Russia withdrew from Bucha on 31 March — two days after signing the agreement in Istanbul — and Ukraine and NATO waited two days before “discovering” the butchery. The public outcry against Russia over this alleged atrocity provided a convenient distraction to the reality — the U.S. and NATO demanded that Ukraine continue the war.

As Arestovich noted in his interview above, this decision cost Ukraine at least 300,000 dead (the actual number is closer to 500,000). The dire situation that Ukraine now faces is described by retired General Kujat, who accuses NATO of fanaticism and delusion.

Big Serge is out with a new piece that is a must read. He concludes with this:

In the debate between Moltke and Bismarck, Putin has chosen to follow Moltke’s lead, and wage the war of extermination. Not – and again we stress this – a war of genocide, but a war which will destroy Ukraine as a strategically potent entity. Already the seeds are sown and the fruit begins to bud – a Ukrainian democide, achieved through battlefield attrition and the mass exodus of prime age civilians, an economy in shambles and a state that is cannibalizing itself as it reaches the limits of its resources.

There is a model for this – ironically, Germany itself. After the Second World War, it was decided that Germany – now held to account for two terrible conflagrations – could simply not be allowed to persist as a geopolitical entity. In 1945, after Hitler shot himself, the allies did not demand the spoils of a Cabinet War. There was no minor annexation here, no redrawn border there. Instead, Germany was annihilated. Her lands were divided, her self-governance was abolished. Her people lingered on in a stygian exhaustion, their political form and life now a plaything of the victor – precisely what Moltke wanted to do to France.

Putin is not going to leave a geostrategically intact Ukraine which will seek to retake the Donbas and exact revenge, or become a potent forward base for NATO. Instead, he will transform Ukraine into a Trashcanistan that can never wage a war of revanchism.