Three Truths About Ukraine-Russia
Lucas Kunce
Ukraine is popping in the news right now, with a lot of conflicting information and misinformation. I know a lot of people out there want to feel armed to address the situation with some clarity given the heated politics around the issue.
So today I’m going to give you three critical things to know based on the years I spent at the Pentagon representing the US military on interagency policy development groups and arms control delegations overseas with our NATO allies, Ukraine, and Russia.
1. Ukraine did not start this war and Russia had no lawful justification for invading.
When Russia broadened the conflict in Ukraine into full-scale war in 2022, the military campaign was preceded by—and has since been accompanied by—a widescale propaganda campaign amplifying Russian misinformation, namely the lie that Ukraine started the war. Putin is no stranger to propaganda campaigns, long using trolls and bots to sow dissension in the West, but experts assumed that there wasn’t “much convincing he can do in the West. Not much influence he can have to convince people that Russia isn’t the aggressor.”
Turns out the experts were wrong. Because in the last month I’ve repeatedly heard, including from some otherwise serious people, that Ukraine or NATO or the US caused this war. With remarkable accuracy they parrot Russian talking points: that the West was behind the Maidan revolution, that the Ukrainian people are the same as the Russian people so Ukraine is not a “real” country, and that Russia had to invade because the west provoked them and shouldn’t have been meddling in “their” sphere of influence by letting Ukraine get closer to Europe and the West.
None of these are true.
https://lucaskunce.substack.com/p/three-truths-about-ukraine-russia
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