PODCAST: George Beebe: The Search For Diplomatic Openings as the War in Ukraine Escalates

There is a very sound argument to be made that ‘Putin’s war in Ukraine’ was started not by Russia at all but by the Ukrainians on 14 April 2014. Look up what happened on that day in Kiev. The new Ukrainian government led by acting president Oleksandr Turchynov declared an ‘anti-terrorist operation’ (ATO) on Donbass rebels. The latter had done nothing more than mirror the Maidan revolt (sans the false flag terrorist snipers’ attack) in order to oppose it by seizing government administration buildings in Donetsk and Luhansk. Instead of negotiating with the still small band of rebels, the ATO sent the Ukrainan army against the people of the Donbass. Kiev was first to deploy tanks, warplanes, mortar, and artillery in Ukraine doing so against Donbass’s largely ethnic Russian population in fairly indiscriminate matter. Villages were subject to strafing and bombing from the air.

A friend recently sent me an article that was published in The Atlantic by a Ukrainian journalist. The title and subtitle read as follows:

Two thousand years ago, the reviled Roman Emperor Nero fiddled while Rome burned.