NATO expanded from 19 members in 1999 to 30 in 2022, including countries that were part of the Soviet Union and most of the countries that had been allied with the Soviet Union before 1991. NATO held provocative military exercises that moved ever closer to the Russian borders, while the U.S. started deploying potential first-strike nuclear weapons in Europe.

Faced with what was arguably an existential threat, the Moscow government opened its military intervention in Ukraine a year ago. Washington immediately began waging a proxy war against Russia, arming Ukraine and using its population as cannon fodder, pressuring its NATO allies to spend more money on weapons and to arm Kiev’s troops with weapons available in the allies’ stockpiles.

Last March, the U.S. sabotaged tentative moves toward Ukrainian-Russian negotiations, while demanding Europe break its mutually beneficial trade ties with Russia.

U.S. political and military leaders have said openly that their goal was to extend the war to weaken Russia. Imperialist politicians and media demonized Russian President Vladimir Putin, just as they did to Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Moammar Gadhafi and Yugoslavia’s Slobodan Milosevic — before invading and destroying their countries.

As renowned journalist Seymour Hersh recently revealed, U.S. forces even carried out an act of terror by bombing the Russian-owned Nord Stream pipelines in the Baltic Sea. (https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream) This act prevented German leaders — had any been considering the possibility — from reestablishing Germany’s trade with Russia for its gas and oil. (https://www.workers.org/2022/10/66955)