this author has called this essay: the myth of russian aggression. it makes much sense as you read thru. then you can ask how many countries has russia invaded since 1945 compared to how many the empire has. even those with little historical awareness if they are honest would certainly have to agree that  the empire is the problem and not the russians. one easy example is the now discounted: russia meddles in our elections, which has been disproved many times and neglects how much the empire has done the same worldwide for a very long time. an easy example is a time magazine cover in the mid nineties bragging about what the empire was doing in russian elections at the time with a cartoon like representation of yeltsin;

Granted, memories in the era of instant media are short. But are they so short that US and European public opinion is being invited to accept, without challenge, a new round of scaremongering about Russia that comes only six months after the last?

It was, after all, as recently as April that most of Europe was on tenterhooks over reports that 100,000 Russian troops were massing on Ukraine’s eastern border, preparing for… well, it was never quite spelled out what they were preparing for.

It could have been an invasion and takeover of the whole of Ukraine, the installation of a puppet government in the Donbass, or the annexation – or ‘integration’, as Russia might have preferred to say – of that territory by the Russian Federation, on the model of Crimea in 2014. Or just a new ‘offensive’ against Ukrainian government forces in the region.

Then, not only did nothing happen, but also two rather large clarifications emerged. The first was that there were not, and never had been, 100,000 Russian troops massing on Ukraine’s border. The vast majority were at their bases many kilometres away.

And second, the much smaller number who were moving around were likely to be doing so in response to reports of Ukrainian troops mustering for a spring offensive, new weapons deliveries from the UK and the US, and some rather extensive NATO exercises being conducted in the Black Sea and to the west of Ukraine.

As is so often the case, what was presented as an aggressive stance on the part of Russia was only half the story. The other half was what the US, the UK and NATO were doing not a hundred kilometres from Russia’s borders. Once you factor this in, you might just conclude that Russia was doing no more than taking prudent precautions and that any troop movements were primarily defensive.

Part of what we are seeing and hearing today is an almost exact reprise of this, even to the troop numbers supposedly on the move. But there are some differences. This time, it is not just Ukraine’s borders that are supposedly under threat. The Western fear-mongering also seems more orchestrated, with the first warnings briefed by the secretaries of state and defence in the US. These were picked up by the UK’s outgoing defence chief, General Sir Nick Carter, before Boris Johnson then promised to ‘support’ Ukraine (against the big bad Russians) in his Lord Mayor’s Banquet speech.

It might also be noted that the US seems to have made special efforts to get Ukraine’s president on board. Volodymyr Zelensky has in the past tended to play down others’ excitement about imminent Russian attacks. But last week he too warned of ominous Russian troop movements – citing US intelligence reports.

The other big difference is the migrant crisis currently playing out on the Belarus-Poland border. Despite zero evidence that this confused and distressing situation has anything whatsoever to do with Russia, many of those peddling the warnings about massed Russian troops poised to invade Ukraine detect the not-so-hidden hand of Russia here, too..........read more........