Ukraine and Russia

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Jeffrey Sachs’ Lies about Ukraine on Democracy Now

Feb. 18, 2025

On February 18 Sachs appeared on Democracy Now.

Jeffrey Sachs words are in black. Our comments in boldface.

What’s happening in Saudi Arabia is potentially very good news. It could mean the end of a war in which perhaps a million Ukrainians have died or been wounded gravely up until now. This is a war that never should have happened. It came about because of several provocative U.S. actions over 30 years, notably the expansion of NATO eastward against commitments made back in 1990,

Ukraine has wanted to join NATO since 2008 but has never been even accepted in the “Membership Action Plan” that prepare countries for membership.

There were no written commitments for the U.S. to not go east with NATO. On the other hand there was a full written and signed agreement called the Budapest Memorandum in which Ukraine gave up nuclear weapons in exchange for several countries (including Russia) guaranteeing its then existing borders. Sachs never refers to that agreement.

Anyway, since when is mere membership in a military alliance a justification for war? We would not agree that the U.S. had a right to invade Cuba even if Cuba had a close alliance with a U.S. rival ... like the Soviet Union.

Finally Sachs doesn’t mention at all what Putin said was the main reason for his “special military operation”, to bring back into Russia the tens of millions of people who in Putin's mind had erroneously become convinced they weren’t Russians.

the U.S. participation in a violent coup in Ukraine in February 2014,

There was no coup. In response to student demonstrations in 2013 Ukraine’s President Yanukovich sent in riot police who grew ever more violent. Yet protesters camped out in the Maidan for months. In January 2014 Yanukovich’s parliament passed laws that ended all political liberties. Massive demonstrations swelled to half a million or more. Yanukovich’ police killed around 90 demonstrators. Enraged populace started a popular uprising and took over government buildings.

An example of an actual coup was in 1973 in Chile when military officers ordered their men to storm the government. That was an army takeover of a government. That’s quite different from an uprising.

the U.S.-Ukraine agreement to discard a U.N. Security Council-backed Minsk II agreement and the failure of the Biden administration to negotiate with President Putin in December 2021 and January 2022.

The Minsk II agreement was unworkable. It was supposed to end with the end of Russian occupation of Donbas areas. There were violations on both sides. There’s no evidence of a U.S.-Ukraine plot.

I was personally involved in watching closely all of those events over the past 30 years. This war never should have happened.

It could have been averted at many times. It could have ended in negotiation in March 2022, saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians. I urged it. The Ukrainians walked away from the table because the British and the Americans told them to.

No, they walked away because of the Bucha massacre. And they stiffened their terms after it was found that Ukrainians were willing and able to defend their country.

This is so tragic. And everyone will understand this as the historians make all of this very clear. Again, I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to understand exactly how these negotiations had broken down. And the United States and Britain were behind it, because, as Keir Starmer said in the clip that you played, this is about Europe’s security. They’re using Ukraine. This is the bottom line.

So, what’s happening, in short, in Saudi Arabia is the most positive news for Ukrainians that there has been in years. President Trump understands — and, unfortunately, previous presidents did not — that the U.S. provocations need to stop, so this war stops, so the deaths stop. That is the bottom line.

Ukraine has been either negotiating, or offering to re-start negotiations, more or less continually. Trump's plan to negotiate over the heads of Ukraine hearkens back to Czechoslovakia's doom in 1938. It is not good news.

I think it’s important for everybody to understand also that on October 5th, 2022, Zelensky ruled out any negotiations. He said it’s illegal. This was a declaration of the Ukrainian government. So, the government of Ukraine, sadly, really unwisely — I tried many, many times to explain to them — they ruled out negotiations. They ruled them out until today. This is tragic for them. Now they say, “We

Ukraine has been either negotiating, or offering to re-start negotiations, more or less continually. They were negotiating in Turkey in March of 2022 when word of the Bucha massacre became known. Talks were broken off by Ukraine, and properly so.

want a seat at the table.” They said, “We don’t want any table,” all along. And Zelensky rules by martial law, by decree, when the opinion surveys show that a majority of Ukrainians want peace right now even at the cost of territorial concessions.

So, my bottom line, Amy, is that while the Trump administration does some pretty weird things, like demanding mineral rights — this is absurd, this is completely bizarre — at the same time, the Trump administration, for the first time, is telling the truth about the fundamental causes of this war and how it can end. And that is the best news possible for Ukraine, first and foremost, and for the United States, for Russia and for the world, that peace could come to Ukraine very, very shortly. So, this, I think, is the bottom line.

The American role in this has been quite sordid for a very, very long time. The goal, starting back in 1994, was to expand NATO and surround Russia in the Black Sea region. President Clinton signed off on that in 1994. Zbig Brzezinski wrote about it in The Grand Chessboard in 1997, explaining it, and explaining in a chapter that is completely wrong when you look back at it, said Russia will not be able to resist any of this. In 2002, the U.S. destabilized the relationship by unilaterally abandoning the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. In 2008, the United States invited Ukraine and Georgia to join NATO, basically over strong objections by the Europeans, but the Europeans went along in the NATO

No, the U.S. did not do that. Ukraine wanted it, but it never happened as explained above.

Bucharest summit in 2008, over Russia’s brightest red lines. This was all known, understood provocations. All of the diplomats knew it. European leaders knew it. I spoke with them at the time. Everybody understood this

The last expansion of NATO to the east was in 2004. Russia made mild objections but Foreign Minister Lavrov actually attended the ceremony

In February 2014, the United States participated actively in a violent coup to overthrow Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine, who favored neutrality. This is very important to understand. The coup took place on February 22nd, 2014. Again, I saw some of this with my own eyes. It was ugly, the U.S. involvement in this coup. U.S. forces paid for this coup to an important extent. They stirred up this coup.

The uprising had been caused by Yanukovich defying the peoples’ will for years, for his ever growing brutality and the laws he passed in parliament ending important rights. There was no coup. The army of Ukraine did not leave its barracks and shoot Yanukovich

And Sachs repeats himself on and on

Things that Have to Be Said

First off it is pretty shameful that Democracy Now can’t find a Ukrainian to talk about what’s happening to Ukraine.

Second, who is Jeffrey Sachs? His biggest mark on history was to advise the Russian government in the 1990’s to give up Russia’s collective property, sell it off and accept “shock therapy” to plunge Russia straight into dog-eat-dog capitalism. Shock therapy was a monumental disaster and the Russian population actually declined by millions for several years. It led to revulsion for the “democracy” sent to Russia by the West and to the rise of Putin.

Third, Jeffrey Sachs appeared on the TV program of Russian propagandist Vladamir Solovyov who not only called for the devastation of Ukrainian cities but for Russia to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine.

Fourth, NATO a military alliance under the thumb of U.S. imperialism is a bad idea. International law, human rights and the United Nations are better ideas. However, countries threatened with invasion like Ukraine have to deal with the world as it is.

Finally, compare Sachs opinions and that of Putin or the Russian state. Very, very close. He “leftism” is merely anti-US imperialism and pro-Russia imperialism. The term for that is “campism” or the “anti-imperialism of the fools.” With all his praise for Trump’s approach and his appearances on arch-rightist Tucker Carlson we should categorize Sachs as a consistent rightist.

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