Don’t be a cuck for the CIA: Of course the U.S. government is lying about the war in Ukraine!

Many progressive activists and groups continue to give wholehearted support for arming Ukraine to fight Russia; continue to oppose a negotiated resolution to the conflict; and continue to turn a blind eye to the U.S. role in provoking the war — even as long-range drone attacks into Russia risk causing all-out war with NATO.

Such naive, unquestioning support for the CIA-engineered war is perverse for progressives and peace activists. Failing to acknowledge the U.S. role in causing that war gives intellectual and moral support to the military-industrial complex and its ravenous lust for money, power, and blood.

Don’t be an ally of Lindsey Graham and the neocons who run U.S. foreign policy!

The U.S. has a history of launching wars of aggression and of lying about the wars.  Once you’ve acknowledged the extent of U.S. provocations in Ukraine, you will likely be ashamed of your gullibility about the official narrative.  The U.S. government lies about every war. Of course they’re lying about the war in Ukraine!  If you’re an antiwar progressive, how can you be so damn naive as to think otherwise?

The point isn’t that Vladimir Putin is innocent.   One can condemn the U.S. role in bringing about the war in Ukraine without liking or exonerating Putin.

Likewise, one can condemn:

• the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq without being a fan of Saddam Hussein;
• the U.S. arming of the Kosovo Liberation Army (a Muslim terrorist group) without being a fan of Slobodan Milošević;
• the 2011 U.S. overthrow of Libya without being a fan of Muammar Gaddafi;
• U.S. sanctioning and overthrow of the Syrian government without being a fan of Bashar al-Assad;
• U.S. support for Israel without being a fan of Hamas and Hezbollah;
• the U.S. bombing of Iran without being a fan of the assassinated mullahs;
• the U.S. bombing of boats near Venezuela and the kidnapping of Maduro and his wife without being a fan of President Maduro;
• U.S. sanctions on Cuba without being a fan of the Cuban government.

I’ve spoken with several leading anti-war activists who have condemned the U.S. role in provoking the war in Ukraine while at the same time condemning Putin’s invasion.  I said to them: Doesn’t Russia have the right to control its borders and defend itself?    The U.S. invades worldwide and, if the tables were turned and Russia had overthrown the government in Canada and were arming anti-U.S. militias, wouldn’t the U.S. have invaded?  They replied: yes, the U.S. would have invaded but the U.S. would have been in the wrong too!

The point of this essay is to lay out the evidence that the U.S. is far from innocent in the war in Ukraine. The U.S. failed to respect Russia’s legitimate security concerns. The U.S. pushed NATO right up to Russia’s borders; armed far-right militias; overthrew the government in Ukraine; and flooded Ukraine with weapons, knowing fully well that such actions were anathema to Russians.  The U.S. cynically used the poor people of Ukraine as cannon fodder in a nasty geopolitical chess game, knowing full well that its provocations would lead to war.

You gotta admit that, in some sense, the plan was brilliant: bait Russia into starting a war, by overthrowing the government in Ukraine and arming far-right militias; reject all attempts at negotiations; and use the Minsk accords as a chance to arm Ukraine.  Then when Russia responds militarily, blow up the Nordstream pipeline, sanction Russian energy exports, and accuse Russia of launching an unprovoked attack.  The U.S. government flooded the media with pro-Ukraine messaging and denounced any critics as pro-Putin puppets.

U.S. hypocrisy is stunning. The U.S. regards the entire globe as its legitimate sphere of influence — invading, bombing, sanctioning, and launching regime change operations worldwide. But the U.S. doesn’t allow Russia or China to control even their own borderlands.  Instead, the U.S. overthrows governments and amasses weaponry along its enemies’ borders — something the U.S. would never allow its enemies to do along its own borders — and then accuses them of being the aggressors.

Many people aren’t ready to hear the evidence and regard any challenges to the official narrative as pro-Russian propaganda.

The Cuban Missile Crisis Reversed

In 1962 the world came to the brink of nuclear war after the Soviet Union positioned missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy and Soviet leader Khrushchev wisely defused the situation: in exchange for Russia removing missiles from Cuba, Kennedy secretly agreed to remove U.S. missiles from Turkey. Kennedy had to maintain secrecy about the deal to avoid criticism from the Cold War warriors in the GOP and the national security state.

Fast forward 60 years and the tables are turned. Prior to the 2022 Russian invasion, NATO had expanded eastward, right up to Russia’s borders, and positioned missiles that could reach Moscow in minutes. The U.S. expanded NATO despite multiple verbal promises given to Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders that NATO would expand “not one inch” eastward when Gorbachev agreed to the reunification of Germany.

JFK wrote: “Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.” But the war in Ukraine is now approaching such a situation: long range drones and missiles are striking deep into Russia, threatening Vladimir Putin with a humiliating defeat.

How did we arrive at this perilous situation? Was Russia’s invasion of Ukraine really unprovoked aggression?

Given the history of U.S. lies about wars, it’s surprising that so many Americans have credulously swallowed the official narrative about the war in Ukraine.

Yes, Ukraine really does have a serious Nazi problem (funded by the CIA)

In 2018 Representative Ro Khanna tweeted: “Ever since the “Orange Revolution” began under President Bush, the U.S. has been complicit in the rehabilitation and spread of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Enough is enough! Our government must stand up to the Azov Battalion and other fascist groups.

Mainstream media published dozens of articles about Nazis in Ukraine and U.S. support for them.

Black Agenda Report wrote:

The presence of neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine was widely known then, not only by the media, but also, obviously, by US lawmakers. As a result, Congressmen John Conyers of Michigan and Ted Yoho of Florida drew up an amendment to the House Defense Appropriations bill (HR 2685) that was to “limit arms, training, and other assistance to the neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia, the Azov Battalion.” The bill passed unanimously in the House and the Senate but was ultimately removed from the final appropriations bill …..

The Atlantic Council even admitted to Ukraine’ neo-Nazi problem as early as 2018 in an article titled, Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far-Right Violence (And No, (RT) Didn’t Write This Headline).

Jewish Ukrainian historian Marta Havryshk writes, in Ukraine’s military has a real Nazi problem  (June 2026) that the “Zelensky government — and President Volodymyr Zelensky himself as commander-in-chief — have made a political bargain with the far right.” Moreover,

Neo-Nazi networks are deeply embedded in parts of Ukraine’s military structure. Their presence is visible in units such as Azov, the Third Assault Brigade, the Russian Volunteer Corps, Bratstvo, the German Volunteer Corps, Karpatska Sich, and others. Yet Ukraine’s Western backers continue to arm, fund, and train these units without meaningful scrutiny.

Even more striking is the normalization of Nazi imagery itself. Official Ukrainian military channels and mainstream media regularly publish images of soldiers wearing swastikas, Waffen-SS insignia, and patches linked to neo-Nazi groups like Combat 18 and Misanthropic Division. This is no longer treated as scandalous. It has been normalized.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock wrote that the Ukrainians are “dominated in their thinking by neo-Nazis — we tend to ignore that, or when Putin points it out, we say he’s lying. He’s not lying.”

After World War II, the CIA actively recruited and collaborated with Ukrainian nationalist leaders, including former Nazi collaborators and operatives from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its militant wing (UPA), to conduct covert anti-Soviet operations. The CIA even admits this:  Project Aerodynamic.   This is the MO in many U.S. (proxy) wars: ally with extremist groups to provoke an attack by an adversary and then accuse them of being the aggressors.   

The Jerusalem Post has an article about U.S. collaboration with Nazis after World War Two.

Provocations

Chas W. Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and a Lifetime Director of the Atlantic Council, wrote that the U.S. “engineered” the 2014 Maidan coup that replaced a Russia-friendly government with one subservient to the U.S. An intercepted phone call shows U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland choosing the leadership of Ukraine.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR Matlock wrote “in denying that Russia has a ‘right’ to oppose extension of a hostile military alliance to its national borders, the United States ignores its own history of declaring and enforcing for two centuries a sphere of influence in the Western hemisphere.”

Matlock also said, in a 2024 interview, “Why don’t we understand that trying to remove Ukraine from Russian influence and put military bases there would be, in their case, absolutely unacceptable and worthy of defense?” Matlock said the U.S. backed the 2014 coup, and “Obviously, to any Russian leader, not just Vladimir Putin, that would have been an absolutely impossible, hostile act, which they had to react to. And in particular, they were not going to lose their naval base in Crimea.” Finally, Matlock said

Michael Brenner, professor at University of Pittsburgh, goes further and wrote: “[T]he provocations as you enumerated them were very great. And whether there was any alternative for Russia other than this recourse to a military solution, is a difficult question.”

Right before the 2022 Russian invasion, Bernie Sanders gave a speech in which he spoke of warnings by U.S. diplomats about NATO expansion. “Vladimir Putin may be a liar and a demagogue, but it is hypocritical for the United States to insist that we do not accept the principle of ‘spheres of influence.’ For the last 200 years our country has operated under the Monroe Doctrine… Does anyone really believe that the United States would not have something to say if, for example, Mexico was to form a military alliance with a U.S. adversary?”

The New York Times and Washington Post reported (here and here) that the CIA had been active in Ukraine since at least 2014.

The New Yorker reported that the CIA and NSA performed a coverup of U.S. activities in Ukraine.

The U.S. and U.K. stymied peace deals between Russia and Ukraine that could have prevented the war (Minsk I and Minsk II) or ended the war (Istanbul agreement).

The 2019 RAND Corporation study Overextending and Unbalancing Russia recommended arming Ukraine as the best way to “overextend and unbalance” Russia. The study predicted that arming Ukraine would provoke a war which the West would have to carefully manage.

Indeed, U.S. diplomats had been warning for decades that trying to expand NATO into Ukraine would provoke a war.

Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and 49 other U.S. foreign policy experts wrote to President Bill Clinton in 1997: “We, the undersigned, believe that the current US-led effort to expand NATO, the focus of the recent Helsinki and Paris Summits, is a policy error of historic proportions. We believe that NATO expansion will decrease allied security and unsettle European stability.”

Diplomat and Cold War architect George Kennan agreed and called NATO expansion a “tragic mistake”: “There was no reason for this whatsoever.”

George Beebe, former director of the CIA’s Russia analysis group and former advisor to Dick Cheney, said that NATO was unwilling to “respect Russia’s concerns.”

Steven Pifer, former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, wrote: “There are some concerns on the Russian side that are legitimate.”

Alfred de Zayas, a former senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, saidr: “The war in Ukraine did not start on 24 February 2022, but already in February 2014. The civilian population of the Donbas has endured continued shelling from Ukrainian forces since 2014, notwithstanding the Minsk Agreements. These attacks on Lugansk and Donetsk significantly increased in January-February 2022, as reported by the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.”

James W. Carden, journalist and former adviser to the US-Russia Bilateral Presidential Commission at the U.S. Department of State, wrote: “The de facto alliance of Ukrainian westernizing liberals and the fascist Ukrainian far-Right which together drove the so-called Revolution of Dignity in 2013-14 ignored their obligation to respect the democratic process.”

Fiona Hill, former official at the U.S. National Security Council during the administration of George W. Bush, wrote: “At the time, I was the national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia, part of a team briefing Mr. Bush. We warned him that Mr. Putin would view steps to bring Ukraine and Georgia closer to NATO as a provocative move that would likely provoke pre-emptive Russian military action. But ultimately, our warnings weren’t heeded.”

Neoconservative Robert Kagan wrote: “[T]o insist that the invasion was entirely unprovoked is misleading.”

Thomas Friedman wrote in New York Times: This Is Putin’s War. But America and NATO Aren’t Innocent Bystanders.

Ambassador Michael Gfoeller and David H. Rundell wrote, “Before the war, far right Ukrainian nationalist groups like the Azov Brigade were soundly condemned by the US Congress. Kiev’s determined campaign against the Russian language is analogous to the Canadian government trying to ban French in Quebec. Ukrainian shells have killed hundreds of civilians in the Donbas and there are emerging reports of Ukrainian war crimes.”

As former House member and presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich said, the U.S. government used “the good, courageous people of Ukraine as pawns in a vicious and deadly geo-political chess game which began well before the illegal Russian invasion. And it is now planning to do for the people of Taiwan what it has done for the people of Ukraine, portraying China as the aggressor while surrounding China with about 200 military bases.”

See Harper’s Why are We in Ukraine? for a mainstream accounting of U.S. provocations in Ukraine and elsewhere. Jeffrey Sachs’ The War in Ukraine Was Provoked — and Why That Matters to Achieve Peace is another excellent essay on the issue, as is Chris Hedges’ They Lied About Afghanistan. They Lied About Iraq. And They Are Lying About Ukraine. Sachs also wrote the useful The Biden-Schumer Plan to Kill More Ukrainians and Why Won’t the US Help Negotiate a Peaceful End to the War in Ukraine?. Benjamin Abelow’s How the West Brought War to Ukraine is a thorough account of U.S. provocations, similar to this essay. Making Sense of a Senseless War is short book about the war in Ukraine. Scott Horton’s masterful Provoked is a 900-page accounting of U.S. steps to provoke the war. See here for a review and summary.

U.S. Imperialism

The U.S. has launched wars and proxy wars worldwide: Vietnam, Indonesia, throughout Latin America, Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Iran, and elsewhere. It lied about pretty much all of them.

In Afghanistan in the 1980s, to weaken the Soviets, the U.S. armed mujahideen who later became the Taliban.

To provoke Serbia, the U.S. allied with the Kosovo Liberation Army, an Islamist terrorist organization. Likewise, The U.S. backed ethnic cleansing of Serbs in Croatia.

The U.S. has occupied 1/3 of Syria — the parts with oil — since 2015, with help from a proxy army, the SDF. The U.S. allied with Al Qaeda-linked militias and used crushing economic sanctions to bring down the Assad government.

The U.S. is now strangling Cuba with sanctions.

The Trump administration kidnapped President Maduro and his wife and is bombing boats near Venezuela. The U.S. is supporting right wing political parties throughout South America.

U.S.-backed regime change operations, economic exploitation, and coercive economic sanctions ruined economies and caused mass migration in both Latin America and the Middle East, causing anti-immigration backlashes in the U.S. and Europe.

The Lancet medical journal reported that between 1971 and 2021, US economic sanctions killed over half a million people annually.

The U.S. armed and aided Israel in its criminal wars against Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon and Iran.

The United States withdrew from the following nuclear arms treaties with Russia: Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, Strategic Arms Reduction (START II)Treaty, Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the Iran deal, Open Skies Treaty, and Conventional Armed Forces Treaty (Russia withdrew after alleged NATO non-compliance)

Brown University’s Costs of War project reports that post-9/11 U.S. wars killed over 4.5 million people and cost over $8 trillion.

The Military-Industrial Complex

The U.S. has over 800 overseas military installations.

For fiscal year 2026 the official Pentagon budget is $838.7 billion, with an additional $150 billion allocated as part of the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill in 2025 (source).  Already that’s about $1 trillion. But if you include money allocated for the Department of Energy nuclear programs, veterans care, interest on the military-related debt, DHS, and other security-related spending, the total amount spent on wars and war planning in 2026 is at least $1.5 trillion; see also here.

For 2027, the Trump administration is requesting $1.5 trillion as the baseline Department of War budget.

The opportunity costs of war spending are immense. For small fractions of the Pentagon budget, the U.S. could end domestic homelessness ($20 billion); make public universities free ($79 billion a year); end world hunger ($40 billion to $93 billion a year); or reverse the Medicaid spending cuts ($100 billion a year).   UN climate scientists say $300 billion a year would stop the rise in greenhouse gases.

Given all this warmongering, all the lies, all the deaths, and all the waste of money, it is essential that progressives and antiwar activists face up to the lies about the war in Ukraine.

In short, the U.S. stance is stunningly hypocritical, given its history of aggressive wars.   Our leaders are lying when they say the Russian invasion of Ukraine was “unprovoked.” The U.S. shares responsibility for the war, which has killed over a million people, badly damaged the economies of Europe, and caused the U.S., Russia, and European countries to redirect hundreds of billions of dollars from social programs to preparations for war. The risk of a nuclear exchange is real.   The world should push for a negotiated end to the war.

Progressives should stop being cucks for the CIA and the military-industrial complex.

For further documentation see https://theukrainepapers.org.