anti-spiegel.ru – The head of the Donetsk People’s Republic said in a press statement that they had found evidence in a Ukrainian staff that Kiev had planned an attack for March 8.

Of course, when there is a shooting, one has to be careful with fresh information. However, since the Western media spread the reports of the Ukrainian government unfiltered as the truth, I see it – as always – as my duty to also report on the reports of the Russian side. Only those who know the statements of both sides can form their own picture.

What happened

Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, made a surprise press statement today. Journalists who were on the ground in Donetsk were invited to do so. Pushilin, in a barely five-minute statement that I will link below, told that a staff of the far-right and nationalist Ukrainian organization “Right Sector” had been captured, where evidence had been found of a planned Ukrainian attack on the Donbass that was to take place on March 8.

Any thinking person should think this is nonsense because Ukraine attacking Russia in Crimea seems like suicide. Therefore, I must first go into the back story, because in 2021, Ukraine wrote into its new military doctrine the forcible reconquest of Crimea. These plans actually existed in Kiev and quite officially.

Therefore, in order to understand what the evidence now secured according to Pushilin means, we need to look at the back story.

The Ukrainian military doctrine

After the Maidan, President Poroshenko enacted the new Ukrainian Military Doctrine in 2015, in which Ukraine first defined Russia as its main enemy and second announced an alignment of Ukraine’s armed forces with NATO standards by 2020.

After that was implemented, the new Ukrainian President Selensky enacted the “Strategy for the Deoccupation and Reintegration of Crimea” on March 24, 2021. One could read about it in the press release of the Ukrainian Presidential Administration, among other things:

“This document defines a set of measures of diplomatic, military, economic, informational, humanitarian, and other nature aimed at restoring the territorial integrity and state sovereignty of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders through de-occupation and reintegration of Crimea.”

The West does not recognize Crimea as Russian, but one has to accept (grudgingly, if I may) that Russia regards Crimea as Russian. Anyone who wants to change that risks war with Russia. These are the realities.

Ukraine has officially and publicly announced war with Russia over Crimea with this document. So it is not at all far-fetched that Kiev has planned an attack on Crimea – and thus war with Russia – because that is what President Selensky officially ordered by decree on March 24, 2021. The document spoke of “measures of a military nature” – there is no clearer way to put it.

A day later, on February 25, President Selensky also put into force Ukraine’s new military doctrine. The document was aimed at integrating Ukraine into NATO’s security architecture and repeated the demand to retake Crimea, including by military means.

The escalation immediately afterwards

Ukraine’s cooperation with NATO has been massively expanded in recent years as part of the process of bringing Ukrainian armed forces up to NATO standards. Thousands of NATO soldiers were stationed in Ukraine, officially on “training missions,” and maneuvers were held practically every month, during which NATO and Ukrainian forces openly trained for war against Russia.

Russian President Putin began to talk about Russia’s “red lines” from April 2021, and Ukraine’s admission to NATO was probably the most important of them.

We remember: already in April 2021, that is, immediately after the signing of the above-mentioned Ukrainian documents, there was an escalation in the Donbass, which almost led to war. Ukrainian troops deployed there and the shelling of the Donbass republics increased massively. Russia then deployed 100,000 troops in an unannounced military exercise to signal to Kiev that an attack on the Donbass or even Crimea, which Selensky had just signed, would not be a good idea.

The chronology was as follows: On April 8, 2021, I reported that one of President Putin’s key advisers had announced that he would defend the Donbass in the event of a Ukrainian attack. On April 13, 2021, at the initiative of the White House, there was a telephone conversation between Biden and Putin, and on April 21, Putin also referred to Russia’s “red lines” in his annual address to the nation.

After that, the situation eased again, Ukraine partially withdrew troops, and shelling of the Donbass subsided. In the summer of 2021, there was the summit meeting of Biden and Putin in Geneva. At that time, I translated the press conferences of Putin and Biden following the meeting.

Mutual security guarantees

I have already written about the fact that something must have happened or been planned in Ukraine recently that has left the Russian government with a choice between plague and cholera: Either accept something that is being done in Ukraine, but which Russia perceives as an existential threat to its own security, or intervene militarily in Ukraine.

In December 2021, Russia sent its proposals for mutual security guarantees to the U.S. and NATO and also published them in parallel so that the whole world could read what Russia was proposing and how the West was reacting. It was not until late January 2022 that the U.S. and NATO responded in writing. The U.S. and NATO rejected Russia’s core demand not to admit Ukraine to NATO, nor to station U.S. nuclear missiles in Ukraine. Each country is free to choose its security alliance, they said, and there are no plans to deploy nuclear weapons in Ukraine, so there is no need to give Russia any guarantees in this regard.

Nuclear weapons for Ukraine

On February 19, 2022, Ukrainian President Selensky openly threatened in his speech at the Munich Security Conference that his country would withdraw from the Budapest Memorandum, in which Ukraine pledged to renounce its own nuclear weapons. This was not an empty threat, because Ukraine has both the necessary radioactive material and the knowledge and technical equipment to process it into nuclear weapons-grade material. And Ukraine also has the necessary missile technology to build appropriate delivery systems. All the knowledge and equipment are still available in Ukraine from Soviet times and can be used at any time, which is why Ukraine was able to produce nuclear weapons, let alone “dirty bombs,” even at short notice after this announcement.

On February 21, just two days after Selensky’s announcement that Ukraine would resume nuclear arming, Putin recognized the Donbass republics and issued a strong warning to Kiev. Putin announced the conclusion of mutual assistance treaties with the Donbass republics and ended his speech with the words:

“From those who have taken and hold power in Kiev, we demand the immediate cessation of hostilities. Otherwise, the responsibility for the possible continuation of bloodshed will rest solely on the conscience of the regime that governs the territory of Ukraine.”

It was thus clear that if Kiev did not stop shelling the Donbass, Russia would intervene militarily. Not only did Kiev not cease shelling, but it also increased it sharply. In its daily report on February 23, the OSCE reported a total of nearly 2,000 cease-fire violations and nearly 1,500 explosions – in a single day, mind you.

On February 24, Putin made another speech announcing the start of Russian military action.

What has now been found

Today Denis Pushilin, the head of the Donetsk People’s Republic, announced a statement and invited journalists to attend. Among them was Alina Lipp, who filmed his statement and sent it to me immediately. In the meantime, she also published it on her Telegram channel, you can find the video with the five-minute statement and Alina’s breaking news on Telegram here.

Pushilin told journalists that in a staff of Right Sector, a Ukrainian Nazi organization fighting in the Donbass and linked to the so-called volunteer battalions, they found a notebook bearing a NATO registration and containing secret data. On it, he said, were data collected by U.S. spy drones that constantly patrolled the border of the Donbass, as could be tracked even on Flightradar. The nationalist forces of the Ukrainian Nazi battalions thus had direct access to NATO reconnaissance data on military objects in the Donbass and also in the Crimea. Detailed maps had been seized.

This belies the statements of NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg, who has always claimed that there is no such cooperation between NATO and the forces in the Donbass. Moreover, data on the control of U.S. attack drones had also been found on the notebook, he said.

However, the most important thing, according to Pushilin, is that detailed plans for an attack on the Donbass and Crimea were also found on the notebook, according to which it was planned for March 8.

What did NATO promise Kiev?

I have already reported that NATO seems to have promised Kiev much more than it is doing now in the event of a possible conflict with Russia. Selensky, in his public appearances after the Russian military operation began, expressed surprise that all NATO leaders refused to provide him with military support after the Russian intervention began. Selensky then called for NATO to establish a no-fly zone over Ukraine, which NATO has also refused to do. And the Ukrainian foreign minister even openly proclaimed his disappointment with NATO’s behavior on Ukrainian television, talking about how there was a “political agreement” with NATO that it would stand by Ukraine. He said that NATO had abolished itself with its refusal to intervene militarily. Full details can be found here.

Today, Selensky followed up again, stating on Telegram to NATO’s address:

“We repeat it every day: close the skies over Ukraine! Make a humanitarian flight zone without missiles, without bombs from the air! We are human beings and it is your humanitarian obligation to protect us, to protect the people, and you can do that. If you don’t do that and you don’t at least give us planes so we can defend ourselves, that only suggests that you also want us to be killed very slowly.”

The increasingly desperate calls from Kiev to NATO are, in my view, evidence that NATO has promised Kiev military support behind closed doors in the event of a confrontation with Russia. There is no other way for me to explain why Kiev itself provoked the Russian intervention by increasing the shelling of the Donbass. People in Kiev will hardly have believed that they could stand alone against the Russian army.

The same applies – if what Pushilin presented proves to be true – to a planned Ukrainian attack on Crimea. I remind you once again that this is not Russian propaganda, but that the military reclamation of Crimea is stipulated in the Ukrainian military doctrine and in a separate decree of the Ukrainian president. These plans cannot be denied, you can read them on the site of the Ukrainian presidential administration.

The question is not if, but only when Kiev wanted to put these plans into action. And that’s where the information presented by Pushilin fits right in because according to it, NATO gave Ukraine access to its reconnaissance data (and maybe some more), which fed the hope in Kiev that NATO would be on Kiev’s side in the event of a confrontation.

And no, that some in Kiev thought that going to war with Russia together with NATO was realistic and a good idea is not Russian propaganda either, hardliners in Kiev have said that openly over and over again. I and you probably realize how unworldly it is to think that the U.S. is risking a Third World War and possibly nuclear war because of Ukraine, but in Kiev, some hardliners have thought that was a good and realistic idea. If Pushilin’s claims are confirmed, NATO has done its part to encourage Kiev in this belief.

Geopolitics

Why it is in the geopolitical interest of the USA to unleash an expensive and bloody proxy war for Russia in Ukraine, I have explained in detail here. This approach is not new, it was done in the Cold War by both sides, i.e. also by the U.S.: one drove the opponent into expensive proxy wars. That the U.S. has now done it again would not be surprising, but just a continuation of the Cold War policy. It may sound unbelievable to us that the U.S. is doing this in the middle of Europe, but from the U.S. point of view, what is the difference where the proxy war is taking place, as long as it is not on their own doorstep?

Russia has the best intelligence from Ukraine, and knowing all this explains why Russia has been so insistent in recent months in demanding security guarantees and emphasizing its “red lines.” Russia has openly said how it would react if NATO attack weapons appeared in Ukraine, how it would react if Kiev attacked the Donbass, and how Russia would react to an attack on Crimea should not be a question anyway.

If Pushlini’s statements are true and Russia knew of these plans from intelligence, the back story of the last few months suddenly makes sense. Russia probably told the United States clearly in the talks of recent months that it felt compelled to take action in Ukraine and to enforce its own security militarily if necessary.

In any case, in the negotiations on mutual security guarantees, the U.S. has rejected any talk about Ukraine, thus deliberately accepting Russian intervention. There is no need to be sympathetic to the Russian reaction, but it should have been clear to all that the U.S. was calling its bluff instead of influencing Kiev to revoke its military doctrines and stop shelling the Donbass.

A year ago, during the last escalation in April 2021, the U.S. was still calling Kiev off. This time, apparently not.