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Explained: How and Why a False Narrative on Ukraine was Created

The persistence of the NATO to incorporate Ukraine as a member ignored the fact that a number of polls from early 1990s to 2014 revealed that only a small minority of about 20% of people in Ukraine favored the membership of NATO

Wednesday March 12, 2025 2:39 PM, Bharat Dogra

[A Ukrainian soldier helps a wounded comrade on the road in reclaimed territory in the Kharkiv region, Ukraine, on Sept. 12, 2022. (AP Photo/Kostiantyn Liberov, File)]

At the time of the break-up of the Soviet Union and unification of Germany a promise was made at very high levels by representatives of the USA, Germany and others that the NATO will not advance even an inch eastwards towards Russia. This promise was hastily broken, despite opposition by dozens of senior western statesmen who foresaw the dangers inherent in this, and several new members joined NATO in the course of its eastward journey.

Ukraine NATO Membership

However, membership of Ukraine was still regarded as a red line. At the 2008 summit of NATO this too was crossed as the USA spoke strongly for this. This was initially opposed by such senior European leaders as the German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the French President Nicholas Sarkozy on grounds that this will significantly increase chances of NATO’s direct confrontation with Russia. However the USA prevailed on them to drop their opposition, and henceforth they started going along with the USA on this issue.

This persistence of the NATO to incorporate Ukraine as a member ignored the fact that a number of polls from early 1990s to 2014 revealed that only a small minority of about 20% of people in Ukraine favored the membership of NATO. The vast majority of people instead favored a balancing of friendly relations with both Russia and the West.

An important section of the 20% of the population who favored NATO membership comprised the extreme right, neo-Nazis bent on hostility with Russia who have always been a threat to finding a peaceful future for Ukraine. Hence the percentage of peace-loving people who favored membership of NATO till 2014 was even less than 20%.

Ukraine Coup 2014

In 2014 the USA and close allies instigated a coup in Ukraine which ousted the democratically elected president and disrupted the democratically elected government. Soon after this, the USA started playing a key role in the appointments and dismissals at key posts in Ukraine.

The new intelligence chief started functioning in close collusion with US and UK counterparts to promote anti-Russian activities. Several actions against the recognition of Russian language and all things Russian were taken and the interests and safety of the Russian speaking citizens of Ukraine, particularly those concentrated more in the eastern and southern parts of the country, were harmed in very serious ways. A violent confrontation developed into civil-war type conditions.

Russia, Crimea War

Before this in conditions of increasing hostility Russia moved to take over Crimea with the apparent consent of most people of the region. The Minsk accords were initiated to settle the civil-war type conditions with the help of Germany and France but Angela Merkel later openly said that this was more of a cover-up to give Ukraine enough time to be get more heavily armed.

Thousands of Russian language speaking people in eastern parts of Ukraine died in the attacks on them and there was clear drift towards separation from mainland Ukraine as well as pressure on Russia to intervene on their behalf.

This pressure was resisted for months by Russia and instead there were pleas to the USA and NATO to get some sort of peaceful settlement. When all this failed and there were increased attacks on Russian language people in eastern Ukraine, Russia invaded in February 2022 but within weeks also initiated serious peace negotiations. These were close to ending the war till these were sabotaged by the west, as reflected in a rushed personal visit of the British Prime Minister Boris Johnson to Ukraine.

Weapons Supply to Ukraine

After this there were several statements by senior US and western leaders to the effect that Ukraine’s war with Russia and western support for Ukraine will be helpful to achieve weakening of Russia and it is all for the good if the Ukrainians can be used for this purpose.

However, after some initial success in battlefield, Ukrainian losses and casualties increased rapidly and it was clearly in the interests of the Ukrainians to end the war as soon as possible but it continued due to the collusion of hawkish elements in the Biden led team in the USA (with Biden himself being very aggressive in this context) and allied countries and NATO with the hawkish elements in Ukraine led by the far right forces in the Ukraine in the background and President Zelenskyy upfront ( in fact there are instances of Zelenskyy at an earlier date being more willing for peace but being threatened by the neo-Nazis against this.

Biden crossed one redline after another to keep giving more and more destructive weapons to Ukraine, in the process at times bringing the war threateningly close to becoming a direct confrontation between Russia and NATO/USA, and hence the risk of a nuclear war and the Third World War became unacceptably high during certain periods of this war.

Human Toll

Estimates differ, but it is likely that close to a million people have died or have been seriously injured and disabled in this war, while perhaps ten times this number have been displaced externally and internally. As the war became growingly unpopular and risks increased, democratic freedoms were curbed drastically in Ukraine and many young men were forcibly sent to the battlefield without proper training. There was big loss of territory and huge accumulation of national debt. A large number of people lost access to basic needs and a safe future, although massive corruption enabled a very small minority to increase its wealth.

Thus while the people of Ukraine suffered very heavily in this proxy war, the background conditions were prepared by the 2014 coup and the subsequent instigation of Ukraine policy relentlessly towards opposition of Russia and all things Russian as well as by the sabotaging of early peace accompanied by increasing curbs on democratic freedoms in Ukraine.

All evidences show that the enormous loss of life, all the tragic disabilities and displacements could have been avoided if Ukraine had been left alone to pursue the policies of being friendly to both the west and to Russia which were best suited to the interests of Ukraine.

False Narrative

While all this was happening, the discourse which was widely promoted and accepted in the west was largely based on the myth of the good and weaker Ukrainians being threatened and attacked in the most unjust way by the stronger and evil Russians, highly aggressive and expansionist almost like Hitler, and hence in this good vs evil fight the good west must help Ukraine as much as possible , most notably by providing more and more deadly weapons ad in fact every redline crossed in this context was a matter of achievement regardless of the high risks involved. It was repeatedly stated by senior leaders of west that help for Ukraine will always be available no matter how long the war continues, ignoring how costly the war was proving for Ukraine in terms of loss of life.

The discourse that was artificially and falsely created in place of the actual ground reality was a discourse which would have prolonged the war regardless of the high risks increased by this prolonging for a nuclear war and the Third World War.

It is extremely disturbing that all this distortion took place despite all the claimed freedom of expression, strength of independent media, high level of scholarship and other supposed democratic strengths of the west. As many popular media as well as scholarly journals in the west are widely followed in the majority world and help in forming elite and public opinion there, the distortions on Ukraine had an even wider reach. In India, for instance, several of these writings are also translated into Hindi to reach a much larger number of people.

Foe anyone committed to world peace, it is deeply disturbing that such false discourses can be spread so rapidly and so widely so as to impact public perception of ongoing events so drastically, allowing falsehoods to prevail over the reality. It does not appear to matter for those participating profitably in such distortions that this can lead to enormous distress and destruction. Surely such a situation should change and significant steps should be taken to avoid cynical, dangerous manipulations and distortions in news and analysis relating to important world events.

[The writer, Bharat Dogra, is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children, Earth without Borders and A Day in 2071.]

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