Copy/paste of comment by Realist, February 28, 2022 at 12:55, because it sums up my take on the situation:

Hasn’t Putin proved his contentions about NATO, Ukraine and Washington?

He said that NATO was basically a pack of jackals whose only purpose was to harass, threaten and damage the national interests of Russia by any means possible and that they would gang up in concert on his country on the word of any one country in that clique under its article 5. He said that various members of this gang (e.g., Poland, the Baltics, Romania) have already been recruited (nay, volunteered) to serve as staging areas for missile batteries aimed at Russian cities because of their close geographic proximity. He further complains that the legitimate government of Ukraine was deliberately overthrown by secret Western agents (CIA, MI5, NATO) and recruited into NATO to specifically serve as both a trip wire and point of origin for more missiles aimed at Russia, because you cannot get any closer to Russia than right across their mutual border, and because no European country is as fanatically anti-Russian and far right wing (to the point of bona fide Nazi worship).

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Mr. Putin spelled all this out before the entire world in great detail. Only a fool or an enemy hell bent on Russia’s demise could gainsay the accuracy of his words. After establishing his pretext he offered a simple solution that would cost the Western alliance very little and would guarantee against all of the looming crises he first outlined. To wit, Ukraine would not be given admittance to NATO, eliminating it as both a potential powder keg and staging area for military aggression against Russia and the missile batteries in Poland, Romania and wherever else planned for NATO countries would be dismantled as a 10-minute interval from launch to impact (2 minutes if hypersonic missiles are developed and deployed by NATO forces) precludes any ability to recognise, let alone defend against any attack on Russia by NATO. All these demands were eminently fair as was insisting that NATO members recruited after 1997 (basically Poland, Czechia and Hungary onward) could not serve as billets for permanent NATO armies or large brigades. In other words, no large permanent attack formations in close proximity to Russia.

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What was NATO’s response (essentially formulated and delivered entirely by the United States)? The whole world took note of it. It was, in so many words, go to hell. We don’t need no steenking badges… or any suggestions from you. We will surround and intimidate you to hell and back whenever we please because we are the exceptional country. We will recruit the Devil himself and his legions from Hell to make your lives miserable.

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This was quite a barbaric response to hurl at any country, especially one trying to defuse tensions and come to some arrangement that would keep the peace. Putin took it as any straight thinking person would. The Americans cannot be bargained with. They do not want peace with our country. They want war in some fashion. Hell, they have already been conducting hybrid, economic and proxy wars against us for quite a long time even after the so-called Cold War was declared over thirty years prior. He looked and listened and saw Washington and other NATO countries shoveling multi-billions of dollars worth of advanced weaponry at Ukraine while encouraging them to attack the breakaway oblasts in the Donbas who refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Maidan coup d’etat. Over 16,000 ethnic Russians in those oblasts had been reported killed at the hands of incessant Ukrainian terrorists brandishing their Nazi identities with fanatical hubris, and this AFTER signing the Minsk2 Accords which promised to cease their systematic murder of approximately 7 years earlier!

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Putin, of course, wanted to save those people from further massacre. He tried one last diplomatic attempt at getting Ukraine to stop their wanton murders, implement the peace plan they had agreed to and start living in harmony in a democratic federal republic, rather than a Nazi state run by a cadre of Russia-hating racists. When that failed his last ditch effort was to formally recognise the Donbass republics as independent states. When the Ukrainian army and its Nazi-recruited private militias continued to attack the Russian people of the Donbas he responded to their pleas for help against the mass murderers. He sent the Russian army into Ukraine, not to conquer and exploit it as a resource for the Russian state but merely to rid it of organised murderers, the disgusting ideology of Nazism, and a hair trigger for a major war against his own country that would be precipitated by Ukraine but vigorously carried out by a paranoid United States that actually has a formal doctrine in writing that calls for suppressing the development of ANY country that even theoretically poses to be a competitor of the American state in any area you care to name (i.e., “total spectrum dominance”). This vile document is known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine” and is formalised in a paper known as the Project for the New American Century. Think of it as the Mein Kampf of fascist America.

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And here we stand. Putin’s fears and reasons for acting are being vindicated as the pack of jackals, the entire European community of nations has decided to ally totally against Russia in support of a truly heinous nation in Ukraine, ignoring the very real grievances of both Russia and the Donbas Republics, essentially telling them to go pound sand, and for even trying to protect your righteous interests we are going to further persecute you. We are going to threaten, sanction and harass you in every way possible, perhaps even on the battlefield (because they keep making threats of actual hands-on military actions). We are certainly going to pull out all the stops to destroy your economy. The pipeline you built to save the imbeciles in Germany (and probably most of Europe) from an energy crises, you can deep six that, and just try to recover your expenses. Banking with the outside world? Forget it, you’re cut off. Transportation links with the outside world? Ditto, all our airspace is closed to you. Due process in commerce? Go to hell, we are already seizing your ships and their cargo. This is already a full scale hybrid and economic war. The next step is to make it kinetic, which we are on the threshold of perpetrating by personally delivering yet more weapons for the Ukrainians to use against you. The Western world has finally elucidated its genuine plans for interaction with Russia, which is to grievously wound it, cause its collapse as a unified society, dissect it more thoroughly than the hatchet job of 1991, and steal all of its natural resources before China (America’s next targeted victim) has a chance to intervene or take its own piece of the pie.

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Europe and its pack of NATO jackals may be feeling pretty smug right now, proud that they were able to play Russia for the dupe so long and so effectively until they could spring the trap, capture their prey and start to eat it alive. However, knowing the leadership that controls the United States, I strongly suspect they are the next meal on the menu, especially Germany, which is simply much too competitive in automotive and industrial manufacturing for the likes of our American oligarchs. Oh, the plants may stay in Europe, but the ownership of them just might get transferred around a lot during the impending world depression and bout of hyperinflation. Think the last days of the Weimar Republic.

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But no one will be able to say that Europe did not deserve what she is about to reap from her dalliance with the American cowboy persona. For nearly 80 years European countries have, understandably, been so spooked by their history of Nazism that to say anything favorable about the ideology, their Fuehrer, their machinations or historical legacy is to commit a criminal offense punishable by prison time and strict fines in many, if not most, European countries. Even Americans who wander into Europe and make the wrong statements about Nazism are subject to prosecution and punishment. With that history and that attitude, it is absolutely a case of mind-blowing hypocrisy for present-day European countries to suddenly reverse engines and embrace the Nazis in Ukraine over the saviors in Russia who prevented a permanent take-over of Europe by the Third Reich. Have you ever encountered such a pack of ingrates? In addition to being jackals. Lord almighty, the Americans seem capable of converting anyone into their evil brotherhood, as long as their is a financial payoff I would presume. Really a sad day for Western Civilisation. This is the day that reason and justice deliberately and conspicuously died. They were murdered in front of your eyes. Who will you believe? The killers or your own lying eyes?

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Edit to add link to Ritter's article: https://consortiumnews.com/2022/02/27/putins-nuclear-threat/