This week, representatives of Russia and Ukraine held the latest round of face-to-face talks, and just when the outside world had high hopes for the prospects of negotiations, the United States frequently fanned the flames outside the negotiating table and made trouble.
As John Mearsheimer, a professor of international relations at the University of Chicago, pointed out: Western countries, especially the United States, bear the main responsibility for this crisis, and AMERICAN hegemony is putting the situation in Russia and Ukraine in an extremely dangerous situation.
On March 29, local time, the fifth round of Russian-Ukrainian negotiations was held at the Dolmabahce Palace in Istanbul, Turkey.
:(parties) have reached consensus on a number of issues, and today's negotiations are the most meaningful of all. Harder questions will be addressed in higher-level conversations. Next, the foreign ministers of the two countries will meet to reach a final consensus, and the meeting between the presidents of the two countries will be on the agenda.
According to Reuters, Russia and Ukraine are "close to reaching an agreement" on key issues such as "NATO, demilitarization and the protection status of the Russian language", and there are still differences on the "future of Crimea and Donbass".
On the day the results of the negotiations were announced on the 29th, CNN reporter Jim Sciutto quoted information obtained from two senior U.S. military officials as saying that Russia had made "major" strategic changes and that Russian troops had begun to withdraw their troops from the area around Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
On March 30, EU foreign and security policy spokesman Stano revealed that French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Schoelz have been open to Ukraine's "security guarantees" request.
At a time when European countries have expressed their willingness to provide guarantees in order to reach a peace agreement, the United States, which has been taking the opportunity to sell arms to Europe, has said that the United States cannot provide any commitment to Ukraine's security.
No one should be fooled by Russia's words. We believe that the Russian forces around Kiev are redeploying, not retreating. The world should be ready for a major attack [by the Russians] in other parts of Ukraine ...
Paul Roberts, who served as assistant secretary of the U.S. Treasury during the Reagan administration, told the Russian Satellite News Agency bluntly on the 29th that even if Ukraine signs a peace agreement with Russia, the United States will continue to cause trouble for Moscow.
This is reminiscent of 1919, when U.S. President Wilson rushed to the Paris Peace Conference with the "Fourteen Point Peace Plan" and demanded that Europeans form the League of Nations in exchange for peace, but the Americans themselves refused to join the League.
Prior to this, Wilson also took the opportunity to make a "deal" and "bought" the Virgin Islands of neutral Denmark at a "cabbage price" of $25 million, becoming a case of "taking advantage of the fire" in the history of international relations.
In Russia Today's view, Biden actually spoke out about the goals of the United States for many years when he attended the "three consecutive summits" in Europe last week.
U.S. President Joe BidenThis person (Putin) cannot continue to be in power.
Russian spokesman Peskov pointed out that Biden's "Putin's theory of stepping down" is naked interference in the internal affairs of other countries.
: If it were me, I wouldn't talk like that. I have been continuing the dialogue with President Putin, we (the West) need to act in unison, and our aim is to hope for a Russian truce against Ukraine.
Soon, the Biden administration was forced to carry out crisis public relations.
As we all know, we can always hear us repeat that the United States has no attempts to subvert the Russian regime, nor does it have any other countries.
The White House defended it with "slipping my lips."
He (Biden) speaks his mind, and he says whatever he thinks.
In order to prevent the president from telling the "big truth" again, on March 28, the media noticed that the White House information office even shoved a "small copy" into the president's hand.
The Reuters reporter noticed that Biden was holding a small note titled "Points for Tough Answers to Putin's Question."
The "standard answer" above was: "I was expressing my moral anger at this person" and "I was not articulating the policy change."
But Biden seems to have "inadvertently" held up the note for reporters to photograph clearly, while showing a "stubborn" side.
reporterDo you think Putin should step down? Is that what you mean?
No, I was just talking about it. What I was saying at the time was my moral anger at this man (Putin), not about the policy change.
Fox News reporter DucyAre you worried that the leaders of the rest of the world will be suspicious of "America back"? Because you are always at odds with what you say on major events.
: What's wrong with me?
: When you say that Russia's use of chemical weapons has consequences, you will take significant action. What does this mean?
I didn't tell you, why did I tell you that you must be a fool.
What if the world wanted to know?
The world wants to know a lot, and I won't tell them what my reaction will be, so that the Russians know.
In the eyes of the outside world, whether the United States will watch the fire from the other side or further add fuel to the fire depends on its own money bag.
On March 28, the White House unveiled a $5.8 trillion fiscal 2023 federal budget, including a record $813.3 billion for defense, more than the combined military spending of 11 countries after the United States on the 2021 world military rankings.
Notably, in March, the U.S. Congress just approved $4 billion in military support to Ukraine for weapons procurement and military training.
In this defense budget, the Biden administration plans to provide Ukraine with another $682 million in military aid to counter Russia.
Al Jazeera noted that advanced western weapons and ammunition were constantly flowing to the far-right organization Azov Battalion.
Jacques Box, a Swiss military expert and former intelligence officer, said in an interview with Belgian reporters this month that the armed men of the "Azov Battalion" had committed "heinous atrocities" such as massacres in Donbass and other areas for years.
In June 2015, the U.S. House of Representatives passed an amendment proposed by Congressman John Cornels to ban any assistance, including weapons and training, to the Azov Battalion. But because the U.S. Department of Defense pressed the House Defense Appropriations Committee, the amendment was snuffed out in November of that year.
According to the Jacobin News Network, the CIA has even been secretly training far-right organizations in Ukraine, including the "Azov Battalion", since 2015.
The BBC asserted that the key battle between Russia and Ukraine in the southern port town of Mariupol, the base of the "Azov Battalion", would be one of the most important battles.
If you turn the clock back to the 2003 Iraq war, which was the first war to be "televised." Television media such as CNN in the United States have made a big splash, and the United States has also shown the world "hegemony under the lens of the camera".
It is worth mentioning that social media such as "Facebook" and "Twitter", which were quietly born in 2004 after the Iraq War, also played a unique role in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. The Russian-Ukrainian conflict can be said to be the first large-scale conflict in the era of social media to be "broadcast live on the whole network".
Social media has also become a new platform for the United States to display an all-round "public opinion war" of "information hegemony."
Recently, the US government has also frequently declared that "Russia may use chemical weapons."
Will Russia use chemical weapons? Is the threat posed great?
: I think it's a real threat.
The media noted that Russia has come up with evidence that the United States operates biological laboratories in Ukraine, while the United States has not given evidence that Russia may use biological and chemical weapons.
We have ample evidence that the Ukrainian security services, with Western support, are preparing to use toxic substances against civilians. The aim was to accuse Russia of using chemical weapons against the Ukrainian people. I would like to formally clarify that the Russian military involved in this special military operation will not and cannot use chemical weapons. Unlike the United States, Russia has long fulfilled its international obligations to completely destroy its chemical arsenal.
In fact, since the escalation of the situation in Russia and Ukraine, the Mainstream Media in the West has continuously refreshed the "lower limit".
The news of the so-called death of all the soldiers on the Ukrainian snake island is false. The Ukrainian soldiers on Snake Island not only survived well, but also collectively surrendered to the Russian army.
The "poor pregnant woman" who was evacuated at the Mariupol Children's Hospital was actually a local beauty blogger disguised as a local beauty blogger.
The alleged video of a Ukrainian girl confronting a Russian soldier actually took place in 2012, when an 11-year-old Palestinian girl confronted an Israeli soldier after her brother was arrested.
The image of the Russian tank being destroyed actually originated from a computer game.
As Mark Twain said, "The truth is still in the shoes, and the lies have run half the world."
In addition to various arrangements of "front-line warfare", Russia's overseas discourse power has been heavily encircled and suppressed.
Russian mainstream media such as Russian television (RT) and satellite news agencies have been banned from landing in the United States and Europe; Russian official accounts have been publicly "restricted" by Platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube; Russian channels and applications have been directly removed from the shelves of Netflix, Apple, Google's app stores, etc.; Russian-related content has been subject to unprecedented and strict scrutiny; and the relevant documents released by the Russian military in the Ukrainian Biological Laboratory have also been directly labeled as "false information" by the American media.
According to Castellum, a global sanctions tracking database, since Putin ordered the dispatch of troops to eastern Ukraine, the total number of SANCTIONs imposed by the United States on Russia has increased to 5532, surpassing Iran's 3616 and ranking first in the world.
In addition to blocking Russia's voice, Western sanctions have also violated the private property of Russians. On Feb. 27, the White House announced the creation of a "transatlantic multilateral working group" to identify, track, and freeze the assets of sanctioned Russian companies and "oligarchs," including yachts, mansions, and other assets.
Maritime database Marine Traffic shows that at least four giant yachts owned by Russia's wealthy are moving toward Montenegro and the Maldives.
In the United States, a large number of Russian restaurants have been smashed. In Japan, a display board for a Ukrainian-run "Russian Red Square" store was also smashed. The owner sadly said: "No matter which country we come from, the store has nothing to do with politics. ”
Under the pressure of Western public opinion, FIFA had to ban Russian teams; Russian vodka was banned from shelves in more than a dozen states in the United States; Royal Ballet Moscow's "Swan Lake" was banned; and even the Russian Blue Cats were not spared sanctions.
Today, they (the West) try to "shield" a country with a thousand years of history. Discrimination against everything related to Russia is intensifying, a trend that is unfolding in many Western countries and is being fully condoned. Such behavior is also encouraged by the Western ruling class. This notorious ethos has created a 'shielding' culture.
Even those who have spoken out in the United States have suffered.
Millsheimer, a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and served in the U.S. Air Force, is famous for his emphasis on vigilance against "the tragedy of great power politics." This time, because of the fair words that "the United States bears responsibility in the Ukraine crisis", he was also labeled a "traitor" and "russia".
In fact, as early as the 2014 Crimean incident, Millsheimer pointed out that the United States' involvement in subverting Ukraine's "pro-Russian" Yanukovych regime planted mines for the situation in Russia and Ukraine, predicting that Ukraine would be pushed to a more dangerous edge by NATO and the United States.
On February 28, when Millsheimer's views were forwarded by the Russian Foreign Ministry's twitter, the University of Chicago in the United States even collectively raised an investigation into whether Millsheimer accepted bribes from Russia.
In fact, The logic of "national strength must be hegemonic" that Millsheimer fears is fully reflected in the Internet field, which occupies an absolutely dominant position in the United States.
At the end of last year, Facebook's parent company announced the transformation of the "metacosm" to open a "new world" for mankind. However, is the metacosm a world of "diodes" composed of 0s and 1s?
In the virtual world, it is the US technology giants that restrict people's freedom of speech and use black-and-white "hegemonic logic" to force netizens from all over the world to "take sides".
At present, more than 140 of the more than 190 member states of the United Nations have not participated in sanctions against Russia, and the total population accounts for 80% of the world. But the United States has never spoken of the voice of the vast majority of the world's people. This is reminiscent of the so-called "voluntary alliance" that the United States forcibly cobbled together when the Iraq War broke out.
: I am particularly eager to find a different way to seek it as much as possible. But in the end, if I held the view that Saddam Hussein would not step down, I went to the opposite side of the United States. Then the next thing you have is to either stand with the Americans or stand with Saddam Hussein.
However, how many of those countries coerced by US hegemony are "voluntary" in their own right? Blindly following US hegemony will only bring great disasters to the world.
What powers do you have? I'm referring to you, the CIA, the U.S. government, or any foreign power, what right do you have to do what you do in other countries? Is it in line with the national security interests of the United States that you have the final say?
: Because the people who suffer the consequences of the CIA don't have a say. The reality is so harsh that we have to continue to protect ourselves because we will eventually protect all of you, and don't forget that.
: Okay, I won't forget. We intervene whenever we think it is in our national interest to intervene [in the internal affairs of other countries]. If you don't like it, you hold back. The whole world must adapt to our approach, and we will not tolerate criticism. If our interests are threatened. We will act.
On February 27, in a program by Republic TV, India's most watched English-language news channel, the host bluntly said in the face of the arrogance of American experts that the United States is not qualified to stand on the moral high ground and point fingers at other countries.
First of all, with all due respect, Professor Charles Capkin, you are not qualified to speak of these moral things, you Americans are not qualified. The United States is not qualified to cloak itself as a defender of democracy and human rights, and you are the most heinous thugs. In 2011, Obama intervened in the libyan civil war that had just erupted, dragging the war for 10 years with several allies of NATO and the Arab League; (after 2000) you waged war against at least six countries, including Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Niger, and you launched drone attacks that killed thousands of people; you also had a notorious Guantanamo concentration camp... You are now blaming India. We're a big country, we're not your satellite country, so stop talking and teach us what to do.
Intertwined with the century-old changes and the epidemic of the century, the outbreak of the Crisis in Ukraine has affected the world.
Finding a solution and an early ceasefire and ending the war is the common aspiration of all peace-loving countries.
However, the United States, which bears unshirkable responsibility for the crisis, has not taken practical actions to resolve the crisis, but has constantly poured fuel and intensified contradictions.
The Ukraine crisis has allowed the world to witness the new form of this modern conflict, and has further made the world realize that the American "hegemonic logic" that tears the world apart and takes the opportunity to maintain the unipolar system is the "poison".
(CCTV News)