The Western establishment media have all of their important talking points aligned as usual.  They have been in sync with COVID for over 2 years now, always shifting the narrative together with the “shifting science”.

And so is the case with the war in Ukraine.  The main talking points are that Putin and Russia are evil and the Ukrainians are good people suffering at the hands of the Russians.

One of the words I have now seen pop up several times from the Western governments and the establishment media is “unprovoked”.  It will be casually thrown into a headline as one of the adjectives to describe the situation.

• On Russia’s Unprovoked and Unjustified Attack on Ukraine

• Australia Condemns Russia’s ‘Brutal and Unprovoked invasion of Ukraine

• The UK and our allies condemn the Russian government’s unprovoked and premeditated war against Ukraine.

There are a lot of adjectives one could appropriately use to describe the war in Ukraine.  You could say that it’s not justified.  I would say it isn’t justified because I don’t think any war can be justified unless you can specifically target the criminals without hurting innocent people.

But to say it was unprovoked is a joke.  Do you know what wars were unprovoked?

The wars that the U.S. government started in Iraq, Syria, and Libya were unprovoked.  Even the war and occupation of Afghanistan for nearly 20 years was not provoked by the ruling government there.  Just because it was suspected that bin Laden was living there when the 9/11 attacks happened is not justification for invading a country.  There was no provocation by the Taliban.

Unprovoked?

The elites in the U.S. have been blaming Russia and Putin for almost everything since at least 2016.  Since Donald Trump unexpectedly defeated Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, they had to make up a giant lie that Trump colluded with Russia to steal the election.

In the 2019/ 2020 race for the Democratic nomination, Russia was accused of trying to help Bernie Sanders get elected.  Tulsi Gabbard, even then, was being called a Russian asset for her opposition to war in Syria.

When the story broke (sort of) about Hunter Biden’s laptop just a few weeks before the 2020 election, the little coverage it got from the establishment media was only to claim that it was a Russian disinformation campaign.  Now, even the New York Times has admitted that it was Hunter Biden’s laptop and that the story was legitimate.  It had nothing to do with Russia.

Almost everything has been blamed on Russia, and sanctions had already been placed on Russia before the war in Ukraine.  That in itself is a major provocation.

But it goes far deeper that this of course.  When the Soviet Union broke up, U.S. officials promised not to move NATO eastward towards Russia’s border.  Even though it wasn’t in a treaty (not that that would have mattered), the U.S. quickly sought to expand NATO eastward.  It was now at the point where Ukraine was supposedly being considered for NATO membership, which had long been a red line in the sand for Putin and Russia.

But that’s not all folks.

In 2013 and 2014, the U.S. State Department helped to fund, plan, and execute a coup in Ukraine, which overthrew the democratically-elected president who was somewhat friendly towards Russia.

Since that time, Ukraine has largely been ruled by U.S. puppets who have allowed the continual abuse and murder of ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine.

The now-sainted Zelenskyy, whose idol is the dictator of Canada, Justin Trudeau, is not necessarily the great guy that the media makes him out to be.  He has jailed opposition leaders and shut down opposition media.  He has continued the policy of making ethnic Russians into second-class citizens of Ukraine.

There have likely been thousands of people killed in eastern Ukraine because the corrupt and evil Ukrainian government allows neo-Nazi groups to shell the areas and make life a living hell for the people there who mostly just want to be left alone (or would prefer to be part of Russia).  But people weren’t displaying the Ukrainian flag in solidarity for any of these people for the last 8 years.

Putin has been clear on what he wants.  He wants eastern Ukraine to be separated from Ukraine so that the people there can live peacefully, and he wants a guarantee that Ukraine won’t be admitted to NATO and that NATO (i.e., U.S.) missiles won’t be placed on its border.

But when Putin asked for a U.S. response to his claims of wanting assurance of safety for Russia (from the U.S.), the foolish and evil elites in the U.S. government basically laughed in his face.

And after all that, we then saw the “unprovoked” Russian invasion of Ukraine.

The war may be criminal.  It may be unjustified.  It may be the wrong way to solve the problems.  It may be a lot of things.  But one thing it is not is unprovoked.