Thread by @emeriticus

Putin invaded Ukraine. But an alliance of bad actors, the U.S. foreign policy establishment, and NGOs paved the road that made the present crisis inevitable.

My latest column is a deep dive into the origins of the war.

contra.substack.com/p/how-the-west…

If the first casualty in war is truth, then all the rest are those from whom the truth is kept.

We are now dealing with the symptoms rather than the cause of the war.

Some stuff that I found really wild:

Between 1991 and 2013, the US government-funded National Endowment for Democracy pumped more than $5 billion into Ukraine to promote civil society. But its real function is as a vehicle for regime change.

"A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA," explained NED co-founder Allen Weinstein.

I actually couldn't believe that he said this out loud, but he did. nybooks.com/articles/2021/…

John Mearsheimer wrote in Foreign Affairs that after Viktor Yanukovych won Ukraine's presidential election in 2010, "the NED decided he was undermining its goals, and so it stepped up its efforts to support the opposition and strengthen the country's democratic institutions."

Carl Gershman, who served as the NED's president from its founding in 1984 until 2021, called Ukraine "the biggest prize" in 2013, the year that a regime change "revolution" backed by the Obama administration would get underway. washingtonpost.com/opinions/forme…

To date, the civil war triggered in Ukraine's Donbas region by the Obama backed "revolution" has claimed more than 14,000 lives. It also flattened Ukraine's economy.

This is called "democracy" by the DC foreign policy establishment.

It's insane how well-documented all this is and yet it remains totally outside mainstream discussion.

People really think Russia and Ukraine started fighting in February because MSNBC and Sean Hannity told them so.

Everyone in this is dirty: Russia, the US, Ukraine. The breadth and depth of corruption and skullduggery is astounding. And again, no one wants to talk about it. We are just told, "here are the good guys, here are the bad guys -- fight."

And because Bill Clinton just announced that the Clinton Global Initiative has restarted, it's important to remember its ties to Ukraine. apnews.com/article/busine…

The Wall Street Journal published an analysis in 2015 of individual donations over $50,000 made to the Clinton Foundation between 1999 and 2014. It found that Ukrainians were its top donors. wsj.com/articles/clint…

A figure who illustrates the incestuous relationship between Ukrainian corruption, the U.S. government, and NGOs is Victor Pinchuk, a businessman and oligarch who served two terms as an elected member of the Ukrainian Parliament.

Between 2009 and 2013, while Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, the Clinton Foundation received at least $8.6 million from the Victor Pinchuk Foundation, which is based in Kiev.

Pinchuk began donating to Clinton NGOs in 2006 after being introduced to Bill Clinton by Doug Schoen, a pollster who has worked for the former president and his wife.

The Journal reported that in 2008 Pinchuk made a five-year, $29 million commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative. The money went toward a program to train future Ukrainian leaders and professionals "to modernize Ukraine," according to the Clinton Foundation. Now it's back.

"Several alumni are current members of the Ukrainian Parliament," the Journal noted in 2015. That year, NPR reported that Pinchuk donated $1 million to $5 million to the Clinton Foundation—Kyiv Post said that Pinchuk "gave up to $5 million."

B. Clinton spoke at an annual Yalta European Strategy meeting in 2007, a group founded by Pinchuk to promote Ukraine joining the EU. Federal records reviewed by the Journal showed Schoen was registered as a lobbyist for Pinchuk during H. Clinton’s time at the State Department.

Schoen denied his lobbying was related to the donations. People can draw their own conclusions.

All this is just a glimpse of Ukrainian corruption. @davereaboi's "NGO Archipelago" is extremely appropriate.

davereaboi.substack.com/p/ukraine-and-…

Regarding the money the NED helped pump -- that is a lot of money and a lot of work for a country that serves no national security interest to the US.