Thread by @themarketswork

1) Before Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, a Decade of Destabilization

How top U.S. officials played key roles in destabilizing Ukraine and damaging U.S.-Russia relations

New from @HansMahncke and myself
theepochtimes.com/before-russias…

2) Although Russian President Vladimir Putin is rightly deserving of blame, top U.S. officials over the past decade have played important roles in critical events that undermined U.S. relations with Russia and resulted in the destabilization of Ukraine.

3) The deterioration in our relations with Russia, in many ways started with President George W. Bush in 2008 when he dangled before Ukraine the promise of NATO membership during the Bucharest declaration.

4) Biden’s current CIA director, Bill Burns, had explicitly warned about the dangers posed by Ukraine gaining NATO membership:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin).”

5) In Feb. 2014, a U.S.-supported coup installed a new government in Ukraine.

Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the candidate pushed forth by the United States, was installed as Ukraine’s prime minister, but would resign two years later amid corruption accusations.

6) In late 2015, Joe Biden began demanding the removal of Ukranian prosecutor Shokin, who had restarted the investigation into Burisma's Zlochevsky.

Biden later famously bragged that he had leveraged $1 billion in U.S. government loan guarantees to force Shokin’s removal.

7) Biden was later privately warned by Amos Hochstein, a U.S. Special Envoy, about Hunter’s association with a corrupt Oligarch.

Biden is said to have ignored the warnings.

8) Against this political backdrop, with Ukraine destabilized and Russia angered by a U.S.-backed coup, Hillary Clinton’s campaign made the fateful decision to accuse Russia of interfering in the 2016 presidential election for the purposes of helping then-candidate Donald Trump.

9) Clinton and her campaign’s politically driven accusations further impaired already-strained U.S.-Russia relations and the impact from her actions are being felt to this day.

10) Four years later, during the 2020 presidential election, the Biden campaign introduced its own claims that Russia was meddling in the election, again in order to assist Trump.

Biden chose to blame Russia for the emergence of his son’s hard drive.

11) Biden’s assertion was backed by a joint-statement from former IC officials that Hunter Biden’s laptop “has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.”

As it turned out later, the Hunter emails were authentic and not a Russian plot.

12) Adding to an already tense geo-political situation, Biden held out NATO membership to Ukraine as recently as Dec. - as did SoS Blinken.

Defense Sec. Lloyd Austin went further, saying the door was open to Ukraine for NATO membership during an Oct. 2021, trip to Ukraine.

13) The overarching national security goal of the US should have centered around preventing Russia and China from forming further alliances.

Self-serving actions of top U.S. officials such as Clinton & Biden, undermined that goal.

14) With the outbreak of war in Ukraine and consequent total isolation of Russia from the West, that goal is no longer attainable.

The likely outcome is that Russia and China will grow even closer.

/End