by Manlio Dinucci, published on Popular Resistance, February 2, 2022
The phone call between President Biden and Ukrainian President Zelensky “did not go well“, CNN headlines: while “Biden warned that the Russian invasion in February is practically certain when the frozen ground makes it possible for tanks to pass through”, Zelensky “ asked Biden to tone down, arguing that the Russian threat is still ambiguous”. While the Ukrainian president himself takes a more cautious stance, the Ukrainian armed forces are massing in Donbas close to the Donetsk and Lugansk area inhabited by Russian populations. According to reports from the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine, units of the Ukrainian Army and National Guard amounting to about 150,000 men are positioned there, the news is overshadowed by our mainstream which speaks only of the Russian deployment. They are armed and trained, and so effectively commanded by US-NATO military advisers and instructors.
From 1991 to 2014, according to the US Congress Research Service, the United States provided Ukraine with $ 4 billion in military assistance, plus over $ 2.5 billion after 2014. The NATO Trust Fund provided over a billion dollars in which Italy also participated. This is only a part of the military investments made by the major NATO powers in Ukraine. Great Britain, for example, has concluded various military agreements with Kyiv investing, among other things, 1.7 billion pounds in upgrading Ukraine’s naval capabilities: this program provides for the arming of Ukrainian ships with British missiles, the production of joint 8 fast missile units, the construction of naval bases on the Black Sea and also on the Azov Sea between Ukraine, Crimea, and Russia. In this context, Ukrainian military spending, which was equivalent to 3% of GDP ( Gross Domestic Product) in 2014, rose to 6% in 2022 corresponding to over 11 billion dollars.
In addition to the US-NATO military investments in Ukraine, there is the $ 10 billion investment foreseen by the plan that is being carried out by Erik Prince, founder of the US private military company Blackwater – now it is renamed Academy – which has supplied mercenaries to the CIA, the Pentagon, and the State Department for covert operations (including torture and murder), gaining billions of dollars. Erik Prince’s plan, revealed by an investigation of Time magazine, consists in creating a private army in Ukraine through a partnership between the Lancaster 6 Company, and the main CIA-controlled Ukrainian intelligence office. Through them, Prince has supplied mercenaries in the Middle East and Africa. It is not known, of course, what would be the task of the private army created in Ukraine by the founder of Blackwater certainly with CIA funding. However, it can be expected that it would conduct covert operations in Europe, Russia, and other regions from its Ukraine base.
Against this background, the exposure made by the Russian Defense Minister Shoigu that in the Donetsk region there are “US private military companies that are preparing a provocation with the use of unknown chemicals” is particularly alarming. It could be the spark causing the detonation of war in the heart of Europe: a chemical attack on Ukrainian civilians in Donbas would immediately be attributed to the Donetsk and Lugansk Russians, who would be attacked by the preponderant Ukrainian forces already deployed in the region to force Russia to militarily intervene in their defense. At the forefront, ready to massacre the Russians of Donbas there is the Azov battalion, which trained and armed by the US and NATO has been promoted to a special forces regiment. It distinguished by its ferocity in its attacks on the Russian populations of Ukraine. The Azov battalion recruits neo-Nazis from all over Europe under its flag similar to that of the SS Das Reich, it is commanded by its founder Andrey Biletsky who was promoted to colonel. It is not just a military unit but an ideological and political movement, and Biletsky is the charismatic leader in particular for the youth organization that is educated to hate Russians by his book “The words of the white Führer“.
Manlio Dinucci, award winning author, geopolitical analyst and geographer, Pisa, Italy. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).