Oregon Hill joins the world in mourning the tragedy and destruction of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There has not been a neighborhood vote or anything, but I am confident neighbors would rightly condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s attack on Ukraine as an act of aggression and a violation of international law.

That said, there needs to be more editorial on what lead to this horrible moment in history. Before that though, the standard disclaimer- this editorial, and indeed, this site, does not portend to represent ALL of Oregon Hill residents’ opinion.

Certainly, the following editorial view is not being addressed by the corporate media- not nationally or locally, and probably does not represent the majority of popular American opinion either- but it needs to be expressed- President Biden is wrong when he declares the Russian invasion ‘unprovoked’.

Biden and other media and government leaders do themselves no favors when try to obscure the American involvement and actions preceding the Russian invasion.

In the years following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the Warsaw Pact, and despite previous promises to not do so, America has pushed a policy of NATO expansionism that has alarmed and angered Russia. Despite many warnings from foreign policy experts, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were added to NATO in 1999, with Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia following in 2004. In a December 2021 speech to his top military officials, Putin expressed his concerns about Ukraine in particular:

Over the past few years, military contingents of NATO countries have been almost constantly present on Ukrainian territory under the pretext of exercises. The Ukrainian troop control system has already been integrated into NATO. This means that NATO headquarters can issue direct commands to the Ukrainian armed forces, even to their separate units and squads….
Kiev has long proclaimed a strategic course on joining NATO. Indeed, each country is entitled to pick its own security system and enter into military alliances. There would be no problem with that, if it were not for one “but.” International documents expressly stipulate the principle of equal and indivisible security, which includes obligations not to strengthen one’s own security at the expense of the security of other states….
In other words, the choice of pathways towards ensuring security should not pose a threat to other states, whereas Ukraine joining NATO is a direct threat to Russia’s security.

Now, Putin is a murderous thug with a reputation for executing journalists that criticize him, but he is also valued by many Russians as a ‘strongman’ who has rehabilitated Russia’s stature in the world since Yeltsin. Having him with a nuclear button is terrifying as he would be a real ‘cold fish’ pushing it. We can only hope that his love of country and self-preservation would prevent him from doing so. You trap a bear in a cave and it will lash out. Why has the U.S. embarked on this dangerous course and brought Ukraine along with it?

And in particular in the Ukraine (the name means ‘borderlands’), there is a very sordid C.I.A. track record of arming neo-Nazi militia. This is NOT to say that all Ukranians are fascists, but this element has been tolerated and even encouraged to fight Russians. Thankfully, local activist Phil Wilyato has done a very good job of reporting on this aspect in the Richmond Defender newspaper and elsewhere. Still, how many Americans really know about this? Because we can be sure that many Russians are aware of it on their border.

But the real problem is that the Biden administration seems to be supporting if not continuing a policy of regime change. In January, it appointed Victoria Nuland to the position of under secretary of state for political affairs at the State Department. Nuland was a key member of the Bush administration who advocated tirelessly for interventionism in Afghanistan and Iraq and later joined the Obama administration and advocated tirelessly for interventionism in Libya and Syria. (We will see if the Ukraine refugee crisis surpasses the Libyan one, biggest since World War II.) But Nuland became especially infamous in her post as assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, where she helped orchestrate a coup in Ukraine in 2014.

Most Americans don’t know the story of the right wing Maidan Coup, which many U.S. mainstream media outlets did not cover. This essentially gave Putin the opening he needed to have Russia illegally annex Crimea from Ukraine and was a major event that lead to the current war.

As stated above, none of these things excuse or justify Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, but they definitely represent American provocation. The question is what comes next? Is Biden’s plan to push ‘regime change’ policies on Russia, a nuclear power? This risks WWIII. Sadly, Ukraine’s immediate future is that of a battlefield, unless cooler heads prevail. Negotiating for Ukraine’s permanent neutrality is a real option, but it may be lost in a fog of war.

Also sadly, any real political conversation on this topic, in the U.S. at least, will likely be drowned out by the same neo-McCarthyism and smearing that we saw during Russiagate, with racist conman Trump and his Russian thug friend Putin used as foils for triangulation. The ruling Democratic Party continues to punch left while joining the rest of the country in drifting to the right. In the process of all this, America will probably squander windows of opportunity for a new course and foreign policy.

At the same time, to end on a brighter note, America and Europe have new incentives to reform energy policy and move more quickly towards renewable energy. From the executive director of the Electrification Coalition:

“Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine is a devastating crisis whose impacts are being felt around the world.
“This conflict is the latest example of the inextricable links between our energy systems and our national security, and it vividly demonstrates the human and economic costs of powering transportation with fossil fuels. In 2020, Russia was the world’s third-largest producer of petroleum. The U.S. transportation sector’s overwhelming dependence on volatile global oil markets – and the unreliable actors who influence them – is a direct threat to the interests of the United States and our allies.
“Widespread adoption of EVs is the best scalable strategy to loosen oil’s grip on our national security and our economic prosperity. As the price of gasoline rises, with impacts felt most acutely by those who are most vulnerable, it is time for bipartisan leadership to accelerate the arrival of a transportation future that is domestically powered and stably priced.
“The Biden administration has taken important steps to support the electrification of our transportation sector, including enactment of the historic Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which includes unprecedented levels of funding for EV charging infrastructure and electric school buses, and executive orders to electrify the federal fleet and increase EVs’ share of total vehicles sold in the United States. And the president reiterated the administration’s commitment to EVs in last week’s State of the Union address.
“We applaud the administration for its leadership on transportation electrification, and we will continue to partner with national policymakers on steps forward to reduce our transportation system’s reliance on oil. Much more work remains to be done to free ourselves from the harms petroleum dependence inflicts on the American people, our national security, economic prosperity, manufacturing leadership, public health, and climate.
“It is critical that we come together now to accelerate widespread EV adoption. This is a moment like no other, and our leaders must waste no time seizing it.”