Mainstream media now informs about "A Hidden History of Diplomacy" of the Ukraine war. It was hidden by them.

As Ukraine prepares for capitulation, the West finally discovers that the war-mongering propaganda ignored Russian peace proposals, which now Foreign Affairs calls "extraordinary" and "stunning".

Well over two years since the escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian conflict, Foreign Affairs published an article titled “The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine; A Hidden History of Diplomacy“. “Days after the invasion began, Moscow began probing to find grounds for a compromise“, says the publication. It adds that Russia accepted the security guarantees, declaring that “any future aggression against Ukraine would mean a war” against NATO itself.

In return, Ukraine would agree to return to the status of a permanently neutral, nonnuclear state, renouncing foreign military bases or troops on its soil (as stated in its Constitution). At the same time, Kyiv’s path to EU membership would be left open, and the guarantor states (including Russia) would explicitly “confirm their intention to facilitate Ukraine’s membership in the European Union”. “This was nothing short of extraordinary“, writes FA.

The communiqué also called for the two sides to seek to peacefully resolve their dispute over Crimea, which the authors describe as “stunning“.

However, the article notes, “Kyiv’s Western partners were reluctant to be drawn into a negotiation with Russia, particularly one that would have created new commitments for them to ensure Ukraine’s security”. This is quite odd, regarding that the same “partners“ spent the last two years advertising that Ukraine will become a part of NATO.

Not just that but “the communiqué described a multilateral framework that would require Western willingness to engage diplomatically with Russia and consider a genuine security guarantee for Ukraine”, but “neither was a priority for the United States and its allies at the time”. “The willingness either to undertake high-stakes diplomacy or to truly commit to come to Ukraine’s defense in the future has been notably absent in Washington and European capitals”, Foreign Affairs concludes.

Of course, none of this was"hidden". The matter of fact is that the media refused to report on verifiable facts and smeared anyone who discussed it as "pro-Putinists" and "Kremlin propagandists".

On the other hand, the very goal of this media pro-war campaign was not so hidden. “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don't have to fight Russia here”, Congressman Adam Schiff declared as early as January 2020.

Accordingly, in April 2022. the US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin proclaimed and urged to see Russia “weakened“. In July of the same year, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan explained that the “strategic objective” was not to protect Ukraine and bring the war to a speedy end, but to ensure “a strategic failure for Putin”, adding that Russia would “pay a longer-term price in terms of the elements of its national power”.

And the best thing about hurting Russia via a proxy was that it is - very cheap. “We spend about $850 billion a year on defense. We're using about 5 percent of that to help Ukraine ... to defend freedom, and to decimate the Russian military ... (That) strikes me as an extraordinarily wise investment”, Senator Mitt Romney pointed with delight.

“If you look at the investments that we've made in Ukraine's defense to deal with this aggression, 90 percent of the security assistance we've provided has actually been spent here in the United States with our manufacturers, with our production, and that's produced more American jobs, more growth in our own economy”, further elaborated Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The leader of the majority in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, stated that the aid to Ukraine is a "direct investment in cold, hard American interests" and Oliver North, a former official of the Reagan administration, compared the proxy war between the West and Russia to "what Reagan did in the 80s”, referring to the support of death squads in Central America, as well as the mujahideen. "Those people were willing, as the Ukrainian people, to use their blood and our bullets", he said. And as a bonus, most of the money "is spent in the US"; fueling the arms industry. In addition, the Ukrainian war will send "the right message" to China about Taiwan, where America should send "the same kinds of weapons systems” as the Ukrainians.

Finally, all of this is perfectly summed up by Carl Gershman, head of the CIA-affiliated National Endowment for Democracy. "Ukraine is the biggest prize", he wrote in an op-ed in late 2013., just before the CIA-backed coup in Kyiv. If Ukraine is successfully steered into the US-led order, he explained, "Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself." In short, in the eyes of Washington, the regime change in Kyiv was supposed to have a similar effect on Moscow.

Aside from the American fixation on provoking Russia’s collapse and profiteering over Ukraine’s collapse, it is important to note that the aforementioned “hidden diplomacy“ was initially introduced in 1990. when Secretary of State James Baker promised Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward“ and NATO Secretary Manfred Wörner asserted: "The fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee."

Well, turns out they lied, provoking the ongoing “unprovoked invasion“.

Noam Chomsky summed it up like this: "If you're a respectable writer … and you talk about the Russian invasion of Ukraine, you have to call it 'the unprovoked Russian invasion'. It is a very interesting phrase. It had never been used before. If you look back at the record, like in Iraq, which was totally unprovoked, nobody ever called it 'the unprovoked invasion of Iraq' … Why? Because they know perfectly well it was provoked. That doesn't justify it, but it was massively provoked."

The list of politicians, diplomats and analysts who warned that NATO's march to the border of Russia is devoid of every atom of reason is quite impressive. For instance, take the 1997. Joe Biden, stating: “Where the greatest consternation will be caused … would be to admit the Baltic States now in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations. And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and a hostile reaction, I don’t mean military, in Russia, it would be that.”

George Kennan, the chief architect of American Cold War tactics, pointed out in 1998. that the expansion of NATO was "unreasonable" "a tragic mistake" and "the beginning of a new cold war", because of which "Founding Fathers of this country turn over in their graves" and which would cause "a bad reaction from Russia ", which is a "more advanced democracy" than the countries that NATO defends.

Pat Buchanan, a consultant to US presidents Nixon, Ford and Reagan, said in 1999: "By moving NATO onto Russia's front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation." Roderic Lyne, the former British ambassador to Russia, claimed that “(pushing) Ukraine into NATO ... is stupid on every level" and that "if you want to start a war with Russia, that's the best way of doing it".

Even legendary Soviet dissident Alexander Solzhenitsyn saw NATO's expansion as "an effort totally to encircle Russia and destroy its sovereignty". He also pointed that Moscow “must not cast Ukraine's multimillion Russian population to the whims of fate, abandoning it, and cutting off all links with it“.

Jack Matlock, the last US ambassador to the USSR, warned that the expansion of NATO was "the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War” which “could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed”. Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Perry testified in his memoirs that when he expressed worry over the NATO expansion, he just got the “who cares about what Russia thinks” reply. He was so opposed to it that he considered resigning.

In 2008, the then-American ambassador in Moscow - and today the director of the CIA - William J. Burns wrote a memo called "Nyet means nyet". "Ukraine's and Georgia's NATO aspirations ... endanger serious concerns about the consequences for the stability of the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement and efforts to undermine Russian influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests ... Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, including violence or, in at worst, civil war. In that eventuality Russia would have to decide whether to intervene, a decision which Russia does not want to face", Burns summarized.

Henry Kissinger, Washington's main national security player, in 2014. noted that "Ukraine can never be just a foreign country” to Russia and that the West, therefore, needs a policy aimed at "reconciliation". He also insisted that "Ukraine should not join NATO". John Mearsheimer, arguably the leading geopolitical scientist in the US today, warned in 2015: "The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked."

The latest warning came in late 2021. when Putin said that rejecting Ukraine's neutrality was a move that would cross Russia's lines of tolerance. Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, one of Time's 100 most influential people in the world, then called the White House and said: "That's great! It's not just a concession, but something that works for all parties."They answered: "No, we don't like it. We believe that Ukraine has the right to join NATO", telling him that they don't plan to negotiate about it.

On the other hand, there is one country that is not allowed to join the Transatlantic Alliance. It goes by the name “Russia”.

Namely, Boris Yeltsin proposed to Bill Clinton that "Russia should be the first to enter NATO in case of its expansion", which "could guarantee a century of peace for the countries of Europe". Putin repeated more of the same, after which the US president told him: "I talked to my team. That's not possible now."

Why? Because the "aim, first and foremost” is “acting as a deterrent to the threat of Soviet Union"; as written in its founding act. Without that hostility, NATO cannot exist.

So, having a green light, at the beginning of 2008. Ukraine sent an official letter of application for NATO membership. In the same year, at the summit of the alliance in Bucharest, the final statement stated that "NATO welcomes the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of Ukraine and Georgia for membership", and that the leaders of the alliance "agreed that these countries will become members". A year later, NATO Secretary Anders Fogh Rasmussen praised Kyiv and its accelerated reform and alignment with Euro-Atlantic standards as an important step towards accession.

After elections in October 2014, the new Kyiv government made joining NATO a priority, and on December 23rd the parliament renounced Ukraine's non-aligned status. In March 2018., NATO added Ukraine to the list of candidates for membership.

At the summit in Brussels in June 2021, NATO leaders repeated the decision made in Bucharest in 2008. that Ukraine would become a member. At the same time, NATO Secretary Jens Stoltenberg emphasized that Russia "has no say in this", because "we will not return to the age of spheres of influence". "It is up to Ukraine and the 30 NATO members to decide whether it wants to become a member," he said. He later admitted that "NATO has been there (in Ukraine) since 2014." where it "trains, equips and supports the Ukrainian armed forces". Also, the Latvian Prime Minister revealed that his country "provided weapons" to Kyiv even before 2022., because it was decided to go "all in".

In March 2021., Volodymyr Zelensky adopted the Crimean Platform, a program meant to ensure the return of Crimea to Ukraine by any means necessary; including military measures. In July, Ukraine hosted naval exercises in the Black Sea, in which 32 countries participated, while between March and June, NATO conducted a multinational military exercise aimed at defending Europe against a Russian attack.

And what was the irrational, capricious and bloodthirsty Vladimir Putin doing while all that going on? Well, he was getting more and more worried. The first public sign of this was his message to the Russian Security Council in May 2021 that "Ukraine is turning, slowly but steadily, into the antipode of Russia, into the anti-Russian territory from which, by all accounts, news that requires special attention in the protection of the national security of the Russian Federation will never stop coming".

In a video address at the Moscow International Security Conference in June 2021., Putin said: "We cannot but be concerned about the continued strengthening of NATO's military potential and infrastructure near Russia's borders, as well as the fact that the Alliance refuses to constructively consider our proposals to de-escalate tensions and reduce the risk of unforeseen incidents. We really hope that common sense, along with the desire to promote constructive relations with Russia, will prevail in the end."

In July, he published his now infamous essay "On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians", which some see as a foreshadowing of the coming invasion. In it, among other things, he wrote: "We respect the Ukrainian language and traditions. We respect the desire of Ukrainians to see their country free, safe and advanced. I am convinced that the true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia (which) has never been and will never be to be 'anti-Ukraine'. And what Ukraine will be is decided by its citizens."

The Russian leader emphasized his commitment to the Minsk agreements to resolve the situation with the breakaway republics of Donbas, saying he was "convinced that they still have no alternative". Unfortunately, his partners did not share the desire for peaceful solutions. Namely, Poroshenko, Hollande and Merkel confirmed that the only goal of those eight-year negotiations was to strengthen Ukraine militarily enough to be ready for war with Russia. The chancellor was hosted by Putin in Moscow in August, where he reminded her that "there is no other tool for achieving peace".

The Russian repeated his request for security guarantees on December 1st, while welcoming new ambassadors in Moscow. "The threat on our western border is growing strongly, and we have mentioned it many times. It is enough to see how close NATO's military infrastructure has come to the Russian borders. This is more than serious for us,... we need precise legal guarantees because our Western colleagues did not fulfill their verbal commitments", he appealed.

On December 7th, he held a video conference with Biden, during which he told him: "Each country has the right to choose the most acceptable way to ensure its security, but it should be done in such a way that they do not interfere with the interests of other parties and do not undermine the security of other countries ... I believe that security assurance must be global and cover everyone equally."

Russia's written proposals on security guarantees were presented to Washington and NATO on December 17th. An official end to NATO expansion and restrictions on the deployment of troops and weapons in Eastern Europe was demanded. On December 21st, Putin indicated that "if US and NATO military systems are to be deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7-10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems". That's why Russia is looking for legal guarantees, Putin said, not verbal assurances that NATO's expansion will stop, because "nice words and promises" have not stopped five waves of the Western bloc's eastward expansion. And if the Western countries were to persist in their policy, Russia would "take appropriate military-technical measures and strongly respond to their hostile steps".

And, although there was some progress in the negotiations in early 2022., on January 26th the West rejected Russia's central demand for a written guarantee that Ukraine would not join NATO. A disappointed Putin complained on February 1st that "fundamental Russian concerns" were being ignored. "Suppose Ukraine is a member of NATO. It will be loaded with weapons, modern offensive weapons will be deployed on its territory, as in Poland and Romania. Who will prevent it? Suppose it starts operations in Crimea, not to mention Donbas... What should we do? Fight against the NATO bloc? Has anyone thought about it? Apparently not", he said.

On February 4th, the president traveled to Beijing, where he and President Xi signed a document stating that Russia and China "oppose the further expansion of NATO and call on the alliance to abandon ideological Cold War approaches, to respect the sovereignty, security and interests of others countries". On February 7th, he met with Macron in Moscow, with whom he talked for almost six hours. Asked if he intends to attack Ukraine, he said: "We are not going towards NATO, but NATO is going towards us."

Five days later, he talks to the Frenchman again by phone, during which he "once again draws attention to the absence of a substantive response by the USA and NATO to Russian initiatives" and emphasizes "the unwillingness of the leading Western powers to encourage the Kyiv authorities to implement the Minsk agreements". This reluctance was confirmed by the Washington Post, noting that Macron "infuriated allies by continuing to talk to Putin." A week before the start of the "special military operation", Putin tells his American colleagues that if they cannot come to an agreement, Russia will resort to "military-technical means".

And the latest trigger for Moscow was probably Zelensky's speech at the Munich Security Conference on February 19th, in which he threatened that Ukraine would acquire nuclear weapons. On the same day the Ukrainian President also rejected Germany's peace appeal for Ukraine to "give up its NATO aspirations and declare neutrality as part of a broader European security agreement". That response "left German officials worried that the chances of peace were fading".

Then, between February 17th and 21st, a ceasefire violation occurs, with most of the exponential increase in shelling coming from the Ukrainian side. The rest is (sad) history.

Looking back to the period before the invasion Jack Matlock concluded that "if Ukraine had been ready to respect the Minsk agreement, recognize Donbas as an autonomous entity within Ukraine and promise not to join NATO", then the war "would probably be prevented". However, since the invasion began, the US has "maintained the same stance toward Moscow: Do not engage", the Washington Post wrote.

America chose instead to be a partner in the war. In an interview with CNN, Biden stated that he has "no intention" to meet with his Russian counterpart at the upcoming G20 summit. "I do not intend, nor is anyone else ready to negotiate with Russia", he then said.

Asked whether NATO expansion into Ukraine was "on the table" in contacts with Russia before the invasion, State Department adviser Derek Chollet replied: "It wasn't." The US, he recalled, "has made it clear to the Russians that it is willing to talk to them about issues that it considers Russian concerns to be in some way legitimate. "Ukraine's future in NATO is considered a "non-question," Chollet said.

As the Washington Post reported in June 2022., the White House is willing to "endure even a global recession and increasing famine" to afford Russia a defeat. The plan for a long-term military and economic campaign against Russia was being implemented despite the awareness that Ukraine could do much worse. "Some US officials worry that the most dangerous moments are yet to come", wrote the New York Times, noting that until recently "Putin has avoided escalating the war in ways that have sometimes puzzled Western officials". Unlike the US military campaigns in Iraq, Russia "made only limited attempts to destroy critical infrastructure or target Ukrainian government buildings".

At the end of October 2022., Putin spoke in an even more conciliatory tone: "We have a message for NATO: let's stop being enemies, let's live in harmony. Let's go to dialogue, to peace. to put pressure on us. The goal is to make Russia vulnerable and to make it a tool to achieve their goals. Those who do not agree, who do not want to be a tool, are subject to sanctions, economic restrictions... That has not passed as far as Russia is concerned. Russia does not challenge the Western elites. Russia does not want to make a bipolar world, it does not want to rule the world.”

In the interview with Tucker Carlson, the Russian president renewed his call for an end to the war. "We are willing to negotiate," he said, asking the White House to "tell the Ukrainian leadership to stop and sit down at the negotiating table". The Biden administration, however, offered a slightly different vision: "Despite Mr. Putin’s words, we have seen no actions to indicate he is interested in ending this war. If he was, he would pull back his forces and stop his ceaseless attacks on Ukraine.

In fact, Putin had already withdrawn his forces once as a diplomatic concession, during the Istanbul talks in April 2022. Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu, who acted as mediator, described the withdrawal as "the most meaningful progress since the start of negotiations", while Reuters called it "the most tangible sign yet of progress towards a peace deal".

Oleksandr Chalyi, a diplomat who was part of the Kyiv delegation in Istanbul, recalled that "they were very close" to ending "the war with some peaceful solution". Putin, he emphasized, "tried to do everything possible to conclude (an agreement) with Ukraine" and "really wanted to reach some kind of peaceful solution", whereby the two sides "managed to find a very real compromise". Former German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder was also in Istanbul and later reported: "The Ukrainians did not agree to peace because they were not allowed to ... everything was decided in Washington."

"President Putin said in the fall of 2021., and in fact sent a draft of the contract that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise that there would be no more NATO expansion. This is what he sent us and what was a prerequisite for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign it! ... He went to war to prevent more NATO, close to his borders. He got the exact opposite", Stoltenberg praised the policy of his alliance, referring to the accession of Finland.

Recalling that fateful Thursday, February 24th, 2022., the Secretary said: "I went to bed. But it was a very short night because I knew that at some stage, within hours, someone was going to wake me up — and that was exactly what happened. Around four o'clock, I was called by my chief of staff, and he just briefly told me that they had started, meaning the invasion had started. No surprise, because we knew." He added that "it is possible to be shocked by the brutality of the war", but that he was not because everything "was predicted months ahead the invasion".

However, like any true "pro-Ukrainian", the head of NATO offers the limitless freedom to expand military alliances as a justification for the "anticipated brutal war". "This is fundamentally not about NATO expansion. This is about respecting the right of every sovereign nation to choose their own path including whether they want to belong to NATO or not", he encouraged Ukrainian selections in early February 2022. On that occasion, he added that "the expansion of NATO during the last decades has been a great success story".

"If Putin wins in Ukraine, there is no guarantee that Russian aggression will not spread to other countries," recently predicted the first man of NATO, apparently referring to the already (too) well-sung irrationality, capriciousness and bloodthirstiness of the Russian leader. A little earlier, the Norwegian called this conflict "a war of choice by President Putin", for which "only he is responsible". "Sometimes in history, it's black and white. Sometimes it's really right and wrong", Stoltenberg concluded.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine “is in many ways bigger than Russia, it’s bigger than Ukraine,” State Department spokesman Ned Price declared.

Also, it seems, bigger than any will for peace and diplomacy.