NATO Chief Admits: “War Didn’t Start In February Last Year, The War Started In 2014”

With the one-year anniversary of Russia’s Feb.24, 2022 invasion of Ukraine just around the corner, NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg this week issued some surprising words regarding the history and origin of the conflict. In essence he finally admitted an important truth, which is of course extremely rare among top Western officials these days.

Whereas prior to these fresh remarks by Stoltenberg, US and NATO officials including major media, have framed the invasion exclusively as merely one man’s (Putin) ‘unprovoked’ naked aggression bent on enlarging an ‘expansionist Russia’, Stoltenberg now much belatedly admits “the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014.“

🇺🇸🇪🇺🇺🇦🇷🇺”NATO has been training the Ukrainian military since 2014, NATO partners have been supplying the Ukrainian armed forces with the necessary weapons and training since 2014″ — Jens Stoltenbergs admits again

“Unprovoked invasion”… pic.twitter.com/Qa8shKSWXx

— AZ 🛰🌏🌍🌎 (@AZgeopolitics) February 14, 2023

Here’s what the NATO chief said during a briefing to reporters, and in front of cameras, as also transcribed and published to NATO’s official website…

“The other thing I will say is that the war didn’t start in February last year. The war started in 2014. And since 2014, NATO Allies have provided support to Ukraine, with training, with equipment, so the Ukrainian Armed Forces were much stronger in 2022, than they were in 2020, and 2014. And of course, that made a huge difference when President Putin decided to attack Ukraine,” Stoltenberg said.

And of course, a central reason for the war articulated by President Putin both in the lead-up to the invasion and after has consistently been that the West was waging an anti-Russia proxy war right at its doorstep, namely in the war-torn Donbass.

It also bears recalling that throughout last year, and especially in the opening months of the major Russian invasion, any independent voice daring to point out that the conflict in fact originated in 2014 – and that the current fighting is an extension and escalation of the ‘long war’ – was denounced as somehow ‘pro-Kremlin’ or else a ‘Putin puppet’ in mainstream discourse.

Below are some essential facts and a much-needed trip down memory lane to understand what we and other independent voices have been saying for years, and what Stoltenberg has just now very belatedly and reluctantly admitted:

• The current Ukrainian government was created in 2014 after a violent, American-backed coup against the elected President Viktor Yanukovich. The so-called “Maidan Revolution” painted itself as pro-EU and liberal, but relied on ultranationalist terror militias such as Right Sector for its muscle.
  • Profile: Ukraine’s ultra-nationalist Right Sector – BBC News
• Ukraine’s new government has banned the Russian language in schools and businesses, even though it is spoken by most of the residents in the Donbas region as their first language (and throughout other parts of the country as well):
  • New law stokes Ukraine language tensions – France 24
• Pre-February 2022, Ukraine had already lost about 14,000 lives fighting to prevent the ethnically Russian provinces of Lugansk and Donetsk from permanently seceding (the 14,000 figure includes deaths from both sides of the civil war in eastern Ukraine). The unpopular war has been going on since 2014.
  • The Russia-Ukraine conflict: a look back at the human toll of fighting since 2014 – The Washington Post
• Few Western journalists are willing to show the misery this conflict has brought to the residents of the Donbas, or the war crimes that have been inflicted upon them. Patrick Lancaster has been one of the few reporting on this:
  • Patrick Lancaster – YouTube
• The Ukrainian government has frequently shut off water to the disputed territories, including Crimea, even while they claim sovereignty over them.
  • Water supply to 345,000 people in eastern Ukraine at risk as Donetsk Filter Station stops operations | OCHA (unocha.org)
  • Russia vs Ukraine: Crimea’s Water Crisis Is an Impossible Problem for Putin – Bloomberg.
  • Conflict cuts water supply for thousands in eastern Ukraine | OCHA (unocha.org)
• It’s now ok to praise Nazis on Facebook– as long as they’re “our Nazis”:
  • Facebook Allows Praise of Ukraine’s Neo-Nazi Azov Battalion (theintercept.com)
• Ukrainian President Zelensky suggested last year that if the country could not join NATO, he would pursue re-arming the country with nuclear weapons.
  • UAWire – Zelensky: Ukraine may reconsider its nuclear status
  • The New York Times calls this “Putin’s conspiracy theory”, as if the words didn’t come straight from the Ukrainian President’s mouth on multiple occasions.

In the Russian view, the United States has the ability and willingness to unilaterally destroy or overthrow any government that does not do its bidding. The experience of Serbia (1999), Iraq (2003), Syria (2011), Libya (2011), and most recently Ukraine (2014) and the attempt in Belarus (2021) seem to support their perspective.

Those who are going on about Russia’s “imperial ambitions” under “Communist dictator Vladimir Putin” have little knowledge about any of this, or why the Russians might feel legitimately threatened by having a US-sponsored and NATO-aligned regime for a neighbor.

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