[US] NATO v Russia: 2014 - 2026
A reference article
Published: 2024-03-08
Updated 2024-03-10: Added Lloyd Austin’s “weaken Russia” declaration which reveals the US’ actual purpose in the war.
Updated 2024-03-13: added important early references: Crimea secession, Ukrainian “anti-terror” campaign, Odessa massacre and Donbas declarations of independence.
Updated 2024-05-27: NATO Sec. Gen. Stoltenberg just sealed it, calling for member states to remove all restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine to attack Russia.
Updated 2024-06-11: Horton interview with Marcetic discussing all of US refusals to end the war added to references.
Updated 2024-11-28: Added U.N. Security Council meeting 11351 at which the Ukraine declared “anti-terrorist” operation which created the civil war is documented as known.
The following is a reference article which covers the geopolitical lead up to, the beginning, and then some of the key events, of NATO's war with Russia as led by the USA, in Ukraine from early 2014 to early 2024.
Its intended purpose is a basis for future publications.
The author proposes a name for this conflict as the “NATO-Russia war in Ukraine”, with the acronym NRwU or NR3U.
The Geopolitical Buildup
1992 - 2022, NATO exercises in and with Ukraine, making it a de-facto member state.
2013-09-07, Astana, Kazakhstan: Chinese President Xi Jinping makes the first announcement of what will become known as the Belt and Road Initiative.
2013-11-21 to 2014-02-21 The Euromaidan US facilitated coup in Ukraine leads to the unelected government of Yanukovych selected by Victoria Nuland. The background to the coup is the problem of open (no customs) border between Russia and Ukraine which would then allow custom circumvented EU products into the Russian market if Ukraine opened its western border to customless EU products. Russia objected and thus Ukraine stalled that component of the agreement and Victoria Nuland & the CIA started EuroMaidan.
2014-03-16 Crimea votes overwhelmingly to join Russia
2014-04-13 U.N. Security Council meeting 11351. “Ukraine's Acting President, Oleksandr Turchynov, signed a presidential decree giving the self-declared separatists until 6 a.m. Kyiv time to give up their weapons” or “the Ukrainian army would launch a full-scale operation — a move which the Russian Federation had publicly stated would compel it to act”. The civil war would start the next day.
2014-04-15 Ukraine government announces “Anti-Terrorist” campaign against eastern oblasts.
2014-05-10 The Odessa Massacre
2014-05-12 The formerly Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Lugansk declare their independence as sovereign states.
2014-05-25 A Ukrainian presidential election is held. Of the planned 2 430 polling stations in Donbas, 426 (17.5%) were open. Crimea had already seceded to Russia.
2014-09-14 During a central and southeast Asian tour, Xi announced the maritime silk road, the next component of the BRI.
2015-02-17 UN Security Council unanimously passed the Minsk II Accords to attempt to resolve the Ukraine civil war started by the US installed Kiev government.
2015-11-15 China secures Kazakh cooperation in the 'belt' component of the BRI.
2015-11-16 Obama pushes his 'Pivot to Asia' "rebalance" on his 9th trip to Asia and the Pacific (to eventually be branded the 'Indo-Pacific'). The policy derives from 2011.
2016-02-04 the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a US led initiative to shape trade across the Pacific, is signed. President Trump would withdraw from, and thus scuttle, this in 2017.
2016-12-05 News of the Nazi, ultra-nationalist paramilitaries in Ukraine filters into Western media
2016-12-08 John Pilger releases "The Coming War with China"
6 more years of civil-war in Ukraine ensue under the guise of an ‘anti-terror’ operation with the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe observing.
Proximate Events
2021-12-15 Russia issues two draft security treaties, to the US and NATO. Neither the US nor NATO respond.
2022-01-06 Foreign powers launch a coup in Kazakhstan which is put down with assistance from Russia and other members of its regional security alliance, the CSTO.
2022-02-04 The Chinese and Russian presidents issue a statement of strategic co-operation; an alliance which is 'more than an alliance'.
2022-02-15 The Russian parliament (Duma), responding to political pressure, passed a resolution demanding that the executive (Kremlin) recognize the self-declared independent states of Donetsk and Lugansk. Following a Security Council meeting and a live address to the nation, President Putin signed the decree. The process of establishing formal diplomatic relations is begun. This spells the death of the Minsk II Accords, which would later be admitted, by the French and German leaders of the time, to have been a ruse to allow the US to arm Ukraine.
2022-02-19 to 22 a dramatic increase (more than 20 fold) in shelling into Donetsk and Lugansk is recorded by the OSCE which is observing the Ukrainian civil war. Ukraine is preparing for and foreshadowing a major military offensive.
2022-02-24 Russia's armed forces invade the Ukrainian oblasts of Kherson and Zaporozhye and come to the aid of the independent states of Lugansk and Donetsk (as per UN Charter article 51).
Key Moments in the War
Only days into the war, Russia and Ukraine are negotiating a settlement in Belarus. One of Ukraine's negotiators is assassinated. This is attributed to Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, which makes sense. They want the war.
5 weeks into the war, a detailed settlement is reached in Istanbul. This is purported scuttled by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. He may have been paid for this.
There are too many forces aligned towards the war at this stage to solely blame Boris Johnson. The US war machine is up and running, CIA and MI-6 are deeply involved, the Ukrainian Nazi's are cock-a-hoop.
In Poland on 2024-04-25, US Secretary of Defence Lloyd Austin reveals the US' real war aim, apart from funding weapons manufacturers, is to 'weaken Russia'.
The defeat of negotiations, and Austin's candour force Russia to adjust strategy. This is going to be a long campaign. Forces are pulled back. During the northern summer of 2022 the EU continues its economic attack and Ukraine has some success with the aid of NATO's surveillance, command and modern equipment. Russian forces retreat from Kharkov and are forced to abandon some equipment. Russia chooses to withdraw from Kherson, seeing challenges of logistics especially considering the continued Ukrainian attack on the key bridge at the reach of the Dniper.
At this point Col. Douglas Macgregor's analysis begins to ring loud and clear in alternate media. He emphasizes that Russia is performing strategic withdrawals. Russia does not care about non-strategic positions and are preserving their men and mobility. Others, including Ritter emphasize the shifting nature of Russia's strategy towards a war of attrition, a strategy which they know and favours them. During this summer, the European farmers protests begin.
In August, the conflict over the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant (ZNPP) intensifies. Russia had secured the facility on 2022-03-05. During August western media issued an avalanche of unverified claims that Russia was being stupid and basing offensive operations from the facility. What, in actual fact, was occurring was the Ukraine was attacking the facility to generate headlines about nuclear risk. Russia was rightly concerned that should the nuclear waste materials from the site fall into the hands of the ultra-nationalist Nazi's they may construct "dirty bombs". The British SAS even assisted in a 'daring' and failed night time river assault. Russia's securing of the facility involved, in the end, the IAEA.
During September referenda were held in Donestsk, Lugansk, Zaporozhye and Kherson. All four regions voted to join Russia. Russia welcomed them to national applause and wrote them into its constitution. Russia finally began a partial mobilization. Civilian missions to provide for the peoples of these new parts of Russia intensified in Russia.
At the beginning of October, Jacques Baud, a Swiss ex-intelligence officer published an article independently of the growing group of independent English language commentators to which this author had been listening. It affirmed their analysis, especially of “war of attrition”. Baud’s expert analysis was based on decades of study of Soviet & Russian military doctrine.
By the end of the year, Russia has installed a single commander for the entire Ukraine campaign and withstood the economic attacks to report a record current account surplus. It had begun building their defensive networks in the critical logistical territory of Zaporozhye. The US its media were crowing about an upcoming Spring offensive while they weere being ridiculed for the "Department of Homeland Security's Disinformation Governance Board". This would explode even more with the 'Twitter Files', proving demonstrably the collaboration of US government funded organisations in censoring political speech.
2023 got off to a great start with the US flushing the German economy down the toilet by blowing up 3 of the 4 Nordstream pipelines. Veteran investigative reporter, Sy Hersh, who many under 30's may never had heard of, hit the news with his report that the US (with a little help from their Norwegian friends) did it. The usual band of media relaying evidence free narratives tried to convince people that these pipelines which require huge ships to lay could have been destroyed by a few people in a yacht. To this date, every single national investigation into what happened has concluded "we don't know", which to my mind, because they were all NATO nations, proves that the perpetrator was a NATO state, aka the US.
By March, China had facilitated a rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia, shocking the pants of the world's diplomats, and placing the US/Israel “Abraham Accords”to politically and economically secure Israel, in total disarray.
In April, with the mud still deep in Ukraine, a US intelligence leak destroyed all of the wunder-weapon narratives which NATO's media had been running. The leak exposed a wannabe information power player cultivating a group of devotees with data from a "Secure Compartmentalized Information Facility" (SCIF). The NATO media focused on how the leak occurred and who was responsible, with the independent media, once veracity was established, focusing on what it said. Revealed were the catastrophic losses which Ukraine has been suffering in Bakhmut/Artyomovsk and that it has no effective air defense. This later revelation, along with a serious lack of artillery shells, continues to this day.
Ukrainian operatives attacked the Kremlin with drones in May before the long awaited Counter-Offensive got under way in June. By late August nothing had happened. The AFU had failed to even penetrate beyond the first line of Russia's triple deep “Surovikin line” defensive works. The West learned that their 'wunderweapon' tanks were vulnerable to drones. The war of attrition was, predictably, continuing in Russia's favour.
By October the world's attention switched to Gaza where the Zionists had begun a faster version of their decades long genocide in response to a single day of audacious resistance from the militias of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
By November, if one zoomed out a little, one could see two failed US proxy wars in Syria and Ukraine. (Later, the US and its allies would “win” in Syria). On the other side the tiny force of Ansar Allah in Yemen was effectively complying with the genocide convention and disrupting Israel's genocide which the US was supporting. Millions of dollars of cruise missiles and billions of dollars worth of Naval assets could not stop the Yemeni's attacks on Israeli, US or UK commercial shipping in the Red Sea. Ansar Allah defeated the US and UK navies represented in “Operation Prosperity Guardian” (aka Operation Papa’s Garden).
Christmas came and went with the Zionists killing Palestinian women and children with US bombs and the Ukrainians continuing to be ground down by the Russia military which had more men, more ammunition, better long range precision weapons and better logistics.
By late January and February the extensive role performed by US and UK intelligence supporting Ukraine became glaringly obvious. In late February Russia overran Ukraine's heavily fortified position in Avdiivka, which had been used for a decade to commit war crimes in Donetsk City by attacking hospitals, schools and markets among other civilian targets. Informed analysts were unsurprised to learn that the money to build defensive lines to fall back into from Avdiivka had been siphoned off to someone's pockets. The AFU were left withdrawing to natural "fortifications" like tree lines.
Current Situtation
As of early March, Russia is incrementally, constantly advancing where they wish as they wish across the 1 000 Km long front lines. Ukraine is rationing its artillery, has no effective air defense, has no significant population from which to draw fighting aged males. Its better trained and motivated reserves, the ultra-nationalist units, served as moral enforcement, keeping the conscripted forces at the front lines. What little 'wunderweapons' Ukraine posseseds were being destroyed when discovered. But, with what they had and were resupplied by NATO with, and with the NATO ISR and targeting assistance, Ukraine continued to cause serious losses to Russia if Russia make the mistake of gathering large troop concentrations. Thus, the constant, incremental, small unit, broad front nature of the conflict.
After Ukrainian President Zelensky sacked his respected military leader Zaluzny to live under the watchful eye of MI6 in London, his replacement, Syrsky, sacked generals who supported Zaluzny. Ukraine purged their senior officers for politcal allegience rather than incompetence. This deprived Ukraine of competent officers and lowered morale.
Without the introduction of nuclear weapons, the result is clear and inevitable.
2024-05-26 NATO approves all out war on Russia
On July 24th NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg called for NATO member states to removal all political restrictions on weapons supplied to Ukraine to be used to attack Russia. Those “restrictions” have been bogus anyway, with the majority of strikes on Russia having been either terrorism or war crimes depending on how one wishes to categorize attacks on civilians or infrastructure. Attacks within the old borders of Russia have rarely been on its military.
NATO’s call for the removal of restrictions has come after Ukrianian leader Zelensky’s presidential term had expired and he is no longer deemed Ukraine’s president by Russia or Belarus.
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NB: Many important events are missing. If you believe one is so important to be added, please provide 3 things in a comment: the date of the event, a URL to evidence of it, short description.
Sources
Geopolitical Buildup
Xi Jinping, Speech in Astana, Kazakhstan, on Building a Silk Road Economic Belt with Central Asian Nations, September 7, 2013, University of Southern California, 2013-09-07
Timeline of the Euromaidan, Wikipedia
U.N. Security Council meeting 11351: Ukraine's Acting President, Oleksandr Turchynov, had announced the “anti-terror operation” which began the civil war between the US installed government of Ukraine in Kiev and the Donbas oblasts, U.N., 2014-04-13
Interested observers may note that the Wikipedia page on the timeline of the civil war in Donbas does not start until … July 1st … 6 weeks after Ukraine authorized the use of its army against its own regions. The ‘Timeline of the war in Donbas (2014)’ by the military-history “fandom” site, is far more detailed and referenced.
Nuland-Pyatt leaked phone conversation _COMPLETE with SUBTITLES”, Diddley Squat, youtube channel, uploaded 2014-04
Official results: 97 percent of Crimea voters back joining Russia, CBS/AP, CBS News, 2014-03-17
Ukraine leader announces anti-terror move in east, Yuras Karmanau, AP (republished at Yahoo! News), 2014-04-15
Burning Ukraine’s Protesters Alive, Robert Parry, Consortium News, 2014-05-10, and NYT Discovers Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis at War, Robert Parry, Consortium News, 2014-08-10
Insurgents in eastern Ukraine declare independence, Peter Leonard & Vladimir Isachenkov, AP News, 2014-05-12
China Pushes ‘Maritime Silk Road’ in South, Southeast Asia, Shannon Tiezzi, The Diplomat, 2014-09-14
in which Shannon Tiezzi mentions the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
China and Kazakhstan: Roads, Belts, Paths, and Steps, Catherine Putz, The Diplomat, 2015-11-15
FACT SHEET: Advancing the Rebalance to Asia and the Pacific, Obama Archives [US government], 2015-11-16
The American Pivot to Asia, Kenneth G. Lieberthal, The Brookings Institution, 2011-12-21
The Ukrainian Far Right—and the Danger It Poses, Lev Golinkin, The Nation, 2016-12-05
John Pilger on the coming war with China, John Pilger, Green Left, 2016-12-08
Proximate Events
Press release on Russian draft documents on legal security guarantees from the United States and NATO, Russian Ministry of Foreign Affaris, 2021-12-15
Kazakhstan and the CSTO: Putin Calmly Reads the Riot Act, YesXorNo, 2022-01-12
Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development, Kremlin, 2022-02-04
Ongoing Report: Escalation of Conflict on the Line of Contact in Eastern Ukraine, YesXorNo, 2022-02-21
Ukraine/DPR+LPR: Death of the Minsk Agreements and the Onset of Many a Speech, YesXorNo, 2022-02-22
Timeline of the Russian invasion of Ukraine (24 February – 7 April 2022), Wikipedia
Key Moments
Did Boris Johnson Take a Bribe to Keep the War Going in Ukraine?; Larry C. Johnson; Larry Johnson; 2025-10-12
Pentagon chief’s Russia remarks show shift in US’s declared aims in Ukraine, Julian Borger, The Guardian, 2022-04-25
EU's 6th sanctions package against Russia, including oil, Jan Strupczewski, Reuters, 2022-06-03
Dutch Farmers' Protests: Government Backs Itself into a Corner Due to Decades of Inaction, YesXorNo, 2022-07-07
Interesting Interviews: Late October 2022, YesXorNo, 2022-10-02
Referenda and Mobilization: A Rock and a Hard Place, YesXorNo, 2022-09-21
Atomics, Pipelines, a Bridge and OPEC+: Diplomatic Deficits, YesXorNo, 2022-10-11
Russia appoints new overall commander for its military in Ukraine, AP/NBC News, 2022-10-08
Cognitive Infrastructure: The Plumbing of a Ministry of Truth, YesXorNo, 2022-11-02
Russia posts record current account surplus of $227 bln in 2022, no author, Reuters, 2023-01-17
NordStream I & II, YesXorNo, 2023-02-09
The Decline of Diplomacy, YesXorNo, 2023-04-11
US Intelligence Leaks, YesXorNo, 2023-04-12
South Korea to lend 500,000 rounds of artillery shells to US -report, Hyonhee Shin, Reuters, 2023-04-12
The "Spring" Counteroffensive has begun in Ukraine, YesXorNo, 2023-06-06
The Rout of Avdiivka, YesXorNo, 2024-02-23
Vixen Vanishes and Medvedev Mastery, YesXorNo, 2024-03-07
Escalation to NATO vs CSTO, YesXorNo, 2024-06-02
6/6/24 Branko Marcetic on the Unnecessary, Futile and Dangerous Prolongation of the War in Ukraine, Horton interviews Marcetic, The Scott Horton Show, 2024-06-10
Civil War in Donbass 10 Years On, Kit Klarenberg, Global Deliquents, 2024-07-08
Ukraine Timeline Tells the Story, Joe Lauria, Consortium News, 2024-10-26
Ukraine Timeline Tells the Tale; Joe Lauria; Consortium News; 2025-02-25
with minor updates on the above
Russia Defeated NATO; YesXorNo; 2025-03-10
The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 1; Sonar21; Archive.today; 2025-04-25
The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 2; Sonar21; Archive.today; 2025-04-26
The Road to War in Ukraine — The History of NATO and US Military Exercises With Ukraine — Part 3; Sonar21; Archive.today; 2025-04-27
Ukraine - Quincy Paper Praises A Peace Agreement Which Isn’t On Offer; b.; Moon of Alabama; 2026-01-30
Provoked: How Washington Started the New Cold War with Russia and the Catastrophe in Ukraine [book]; Scott Horton; 2025
NATO Expansionism and the Collapse of Pan-European Security; Glenn Diesen; Glenn's Substack; 2025-02-03
Has NATO Supported or Destroyed Ukraine's Sovereignty and Democracy?; Glenn Diesen; Glenn's Substack; 2025-03-09
Aaron Mate on how NATO provoked Russia in Ukraine and undermined peace; The Grayzone; The Grayzone; 2025-03-20
Will the Nationalists Turn Against Zelensky?; Glenn Diesen interviews Nicolai Petro; Glenn Diesen; 2025-03-21
Subverting the OSCE to Facilitate a War; YesXorNo; 2025-09-01
The Third World War Begins in Donbas; Prof. Lottaz interviews Journalist Ulrich Heyden; Neutrality Studies; 2026-05-27
Culture
1812 Overture with Russian Chorus, Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture; Russian Bolshoi Symphony Orchestra conducted by Tomomi Nishimoto performed on January 2nd 2004 in the Grand Hall of the Moscow Consevatoire, KevinTay, uploaded 2021-05-21
Copyleft: CC0
Great synopsis....Thank you!