“Aggression” and Economic Warfare: The Entire Case for Sanctions Against Russia Is Pure Lies
By Eric Zuesse
Global Research
February 28, 2015
U.S. President Barack Obama has stated many times his case against Russia — the reason for the economic sanctions. In his National Security Strategy 2015, he uses the term “aggression” 18 times, and 17 of them are referring specifically to only one country as “aggressive”: Russia. However, not once does he say there what the “aggression” consisted of: what its target was, or what it itself was. He’s vague there on everything except his own target: Russia.
For those things (what Russia’s “aggression” consists of), Obama’s only statement that has been even as lengthy as moderately brief — since he has never presented it at any more length — was his interview with Fareed Zacaria of CNN on 1 February 2015, which happened to be a statement given only three days short of the first anniversary of his agent’s, Victoria Nuland’s, having selected, on 4 February 2014, whom the next leader of Ukraine would be, Arseniy Yatsenyuk (she called him “Yats”) after the democratically elected and sitting Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych, would become overthrown, which happened 18 days later, on 22 February 2014. (It was nothing like Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution”. This wasn’t democratic; it was a coup.)
Obama said there, in this CNN interview, that the reason for the sanctions against Russia was that,
“since Mr. Putin made this decision around Crimea and Ukraine — not because of some grand strategy, but essentially because he was caught off-balance by the protests in the Maidan and Yanukovych then fleeing after we had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine — since that time, this improvisation that he’s been doing has getting — has gotten him deeper and deeper into a situation that is a violation of international law, that violates the integrity, territorial integrity and sovereignty of Ukraine, has isolated Russia diplomatically, has made Europe wary of doing business with Russia, has allowed the imposition of sanctions that are crippling Russia’s economy at a time when their oil revenues are dropping. There’s no formula in which this ends up being good for Russia. The annexation of Crimea is a cost, not a benefit, to Russia. The days in which conquest of land somehow was a formula for great nation status is over.”
That’s all; he didn’t mention the subsequent shooting-down of the Malaysian airliner over the conflict-zone in Ukraine on 17 July 2014, which was the incident that he used, after the first set of sanctions, in order to get the European Union to increase the sanctions against Russia (and that incident will be discussed at the end of this article because he simply didn’t mention it in this, his lengthiest statement on the cause of the sanctions). His entire reason there — and no reason at all was given in his National Security Strategy 2015 for calling Russia “aggressive” — was “the annexation of Crimea.”
What, then, are the facts on that matter, of Crimea?
The Rest…HERE
