Last week, India made clear it will not cease buying Russian Oil. Today, China said the same thing. They are talking about US Secondary Sanctions against Russia over the Ukraine War.
The collective West claims that Russian Oil Sales are "bankrolling Russia's war against Ukraine." It never occurs to the collective West that THEY are making Ukraine's war possible through weapons sales and financial aid.
The Russians point out that none of this would have been necessary had the USA and NATO honored their promise to Mikhail Gorbachev from February 9, 1990, when then US Secretary of State James Baker, delivered a promise from then US President George H.W. Bush (the father). The promise went like this: "If the Soviet Union agrees to allow East and West Germany to re-unify, then NATO will not move one inch eastward."
Columbia professor Jeffrey Sachs and Chicago professor John Mearsheimer argue that during the lengthy negotiations on German unification, US, European and German leaders made explicit assurances to Gorbachev that there would be no future NATO expansion eastward. The promise was repeated in several other meetings with Gorbachev, and in several other meetings with other Soviet officials, and it is recorded in the U.S. National Security Archive, shown below:
To give you an idea of how big a deal this would be for the Soviets, they had to withdraw three-hundred-thousand Soviet troops from East Germany in order to make the re-unification possible. It was a gigantic risk for the Soviets national security.
In the end, Gorbachev agreed. He withdrew the troops and the two Germanys were re-unified. There was the peace.
Even if only verbal and not in a formal treaty, Gorbachev understood the assurances as a “binding agreement.” Subsequently, Soviet leaders made decisions on that basis and acted on them - withdrawing the Red Army from Germany and dissolving the Warsaw Pact.
1996 Election Year: With an eye on the Polish and Eastern European vote in northern Illinois, Bill Clinton campaigned on enlarging NATO into Eastern Europe. (Bill Clinton carried Illinois and handily defeated Bob Dole.)
12 March 1999: The Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland join NATO. A weakened post-Soviet Russia, led by Boris Yeltsin, whose economy was controlled by a bevy of Oligarchs, could do nothing about it. Powerless, Yeltsin was “infuriated” with “his friend Bill Clinton” for breaking with past US assurances on NATO expansion.
31 Dec 1999: After years of heavy drinking and suffering from health problems, Boris Yeltsin unexpectedly resigned. Vladimir Putin becomes Prime Minister of Russia. Yeltsin’s last words to Putin: “Take care of Russia.”
29 March 2004: George W. Bush is now president, and seven more Eastern European countries join NATO: Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia - largest wave of NATO enlargement in its history.
April 2008: At the NATO summit in Bucharest, George W. Bush announces that Ukraine and Georgia are on an “immediate path to NATO.” German Chancellor Angela Merkel: “I was very sure that Putin was not going to just let that happen. From his perspective, this would be a declaration of war,” she recalled in 2022.
2008: Bill Burns, ambassador to Russia, sent a memo to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice: Across the board, he wrote, the Russian political class told him, “Ukraine is the reddest of red lines” – “Nyet means nyet.”
The memo, CLASSIFIED, was ultimately leaked to WIkiLEAKS and made public. That memo spells-out that the US and NATO all knew, asking Ukraine to join NATO would have serious ramifications, up to and including war with Russia! Here is that CLASSIFIED memo:
William Joseph Burns, who signed the memo above "BURNS" became the 8th director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) during the Biden administration from March 19, 2021 to January 20, 2025.
He tucked tail and ran when Trump got sworn-in for a Second Term because he KNEW he allowed this Ukraine thing to become a war when none of it had to be.
Back to the Historical Time-line:
22 Feb 2014: Just as the Sochi Winter Olympics got underway, the “Maidan” coup in Kyiv erupted in violence. State Department official Victoria Nuland boasted that since the 2004-2005 “Orange Revolution,” the US had spent $5 billion on regime change in Ukraine.
Nuland made that boast on a telephone call which was intercepted by Russian Intelligence, and made public.
(Continuing on 22 Feb 2014) NATO rooftop snipers killed both protestors and police, forcing Ukraine’s democratically elected pro-Russian leader Viktor Yanukovych to flee. In response to Yanukovych’s downfall, Putin stepped up Russian support for Russian-speaking separatist rebels in the Donbass, while US accelerated its efforts to arm and train Ukraine’s army.
NATO sent Snipers into the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine, to make it more violent!!!!! NATO knew it was overthrowing Ukraine's democratically-elected President, and they did it anyway. So all those who say Russia's invasion into Ukraine was "unprovoked" are either completely ignorant of the facts, or lying.
After Ukraine President Yanukovych was forced to flee the country, United States Senator Chris Smith (D-CT) went on C-SPAN and boasted that we in the United States, working on the ground during the riots, helped impose "regime change" in Ukraine. Here is video in which he admits it:
2 May 2014: The Donbass crisis point of no return: Bussed to Odessa from Kyiv, Right Sector thugs carrying baseball bats confront ethnic Russians protesting the coup in Kyiv. When protestors fled into the city’s Trade Unions House, the building was set on fire. Forty-eight people that day were burned or bludgeoned to death.
11 Feb 2015: Putin and then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko meet with French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel in Minsk, Belarus, known as the multi-year Minsk accords.
The leaders agreed to a deal that would have ended fighting in eastern Ukraine - granted autonomy to the Russian-speaking Donbass. Successive Ukrainian governments, however, refused to implement the accord. German Chancellor Merkel later admitted that Minsk was a stall tactic to allow the West to build Ukraine’s army up to NATO standards.
Merkel KNEW her presence at the Minsk Conference was a complete RUSE. She went to it with the INTENTION TO DECEIVE, to buy time, for the West to arm Ukraine for war with Russia. (HT REMARK: Do any of you Readers still think the war was "unprovoked?)
31 Dec 2016, New Year’s Eve, twenty days before the incoming Trump admin, Lindsey Graham, with a bi-partisan group of US Senators, visited Ukrainian troops on the civil war Line of Contact, encouraging them to take the war to Russia: "Your fight is our fight. . . "
Senator Graham and former Senator John McCain actually GOADED the troops to attack Russia! Video proof:
17 Dec 2021: Team Biden rejects Putin’s proposed mutual security accords that would have left “neutral” Ukraine intact. For years, Russia tried to convince successive US administrations that Ukraine was off-limits to NATO membership, but Russian concerns were brushed aside. In December 2021, Team Biden insisted, “Russia doesn’t say who can join NATO.”
18 Feb 2022: During the Winter Olympics in China, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) documented that Ukraine was ramping up artillery attacks along the Line of Contact. (Since the 2014 coup in Kyiv, the Armed forces of Ukraine, including the Neo-Nazi Banderites, had already killed 14,000 Donbass ethnic Russians.)
19 Feb 2022: Invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference, Ukrainian President Zelensky said "Ukraine will get and deploy nuclear missiles."
20 Feb 2022: On CBS’ 60 Minutes, final day of the Olympics in China, Ukraine’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Dmytro Kuleba said, “Ukraine will never honor the Minsk cease fire.”
21 Feb 2022: Russia captured a Ukrainian soldier, killed five others as they crossed over the border into Rostov. Russia learned the invasion of Donetsk city was imminent and recognized the breakaway Donbass and Luhansk oblasts as independent republics.
24 Feb 2022: With 90,000 troops, Russia launched its limited “Special Military Operation” - not a "full scale invasion." Citing the UN principle, “Responsibility to Protect,” Russia finally intervened in the eight-year Donbass crisis after all prospects for diplomacy had failed.
March-April 2022, week six of the invasion, Russia and Ukraine convened peace talks in Istanbul. Ukrainian diplomat Oleksandr Chalyi said the two sides “managed to find a compromise” - and “were very close to finalizing the war with a peaceful settlement.”
Later, Chalyi recalled, “Putin tried to do everything possible to conclude an agreement with Ukraine.” But Joe Biden and Boris Johnson, who flew to Kyiv, urged Zelensky to “keep fighting; we have your back.” Under pressure, Zelensky chose to walk away from peace.
The future of the world order may not hinge on who wins the war on the Russian steppes, unless, of course, events spiral into a nuclear catastrophe - a scenario that cannot be ruled out; however, right now, for Russia, Ukraine and NATO, there is no escaping the battle, and, as of 3 March 2025, no one is getting ready to back down.
HAL TURNER EDITORIAL OPINION
The irrefutable facts reported above cannot be disputed or explained-away. The US National Security Archive document PROVES that the US promised "NATO will not move one inch east" and later, it was President Bill Clinton who BROKE THAT PROMISE and signed approval of NATO doing exactly that. Need proof? Here is the photo of Bill Clinton doing it:
It has been we in the United States, and our NATO vassals, who have planned every step of the ongoing situation, and did so for YEARS. The war in Ukraine is OUR FAULT.
We are in the wrong. We gave our word to Gorbachev that "NATO will not move one inch east" and we BROKE OUR WORD.
I am sick to death of hearing about Russia's "illegal and unprovoked invasion." Russia is defending itself from NATO expansion. Self-Defense is legal. And as for "unprovoked" no rational person can make any such claim; we in the collective West provoked this over and over again.
These are the facts and they are not in dispute.
Fast-Forward to this month.
President Trump declared that unless Russia agrees to a ceasefire in Ukraine within fifty (5) days, he would apply "Secondary Sanctions" against Russian Oil.
Secondary Sanctions would mean that any third country that buys Russian Oil, would have THEIR PRODUCTS to the United States, Tariffed at 100%. Such a Tariff would make products from those countries too expensive, and crush the sale of those products inside the United States. Americans just wouldn't buy those products; too expensive.
The effective date for those secondary sanctions would have been September 2.
Then Trump changed his decision. After effective bombing by Russia against Ukraine, Trump declared he would not wait the 50 days, he was changing the date to "10 or 12 days" making the new date August 8. THIS WEEK.
It is proper that readers recall what happened the last time the United States applied sanctions to oil sales: The US cut off oil sales to Japan in 1941.
That single act caused Japan to make detailed plans to ATTACK THE UNITED STATES, and they did so on December 7, 1941 by attacking the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii.
Russia is not Japan. Russia is not limited to attacking Hawaii. Russia has the missiles to attack anywhere in the entire United States. Not one square inch of the USA is outside the range of Russian missiles.
Sanctioning oil sales caused the US to be attacked and enter World War 2. Here we are, 84 years later, and what we're about to do to Russia is worse than what we did to Japan.
Japan attacked us over it. What do you think the Russians will do?
None of this has to be.
The US broke its promise to not move NATO.
As condition for ending the war, Russia demands that Ukraine NOT join NATO. Since Ukriane territory was conquered in the conflict, Russia also demands Ukraine accept and acknowledge those regions are now - and will forever be - Russia.
Ukraine refuses both points.
The Russians made clear they will continue the war until their objectives are met. If Ukraine continues to refuse, there may not BE a "Ukraine" when it's all over.
Now the US is stepping-in . . . . with a tactic from 84 years ago, which got us attacked.
Most educated and informed observers understand Russia will not back down.
The US federal government appears to be well on its way to getting us attacked. Here. Inside the USA.
I Hope you've got emergency food water and medicine if the fighting starts.
