John Mearsheimer: "The West is primarily responsible for what is happening today"

As noted in the video description, John Mearsheimer's main work on Ukraine is “Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin”, published in September-October 2014.

“There are two points of view on this issue. The first point of view: the crisis is caused by the West, and especially by the USA. The second point of view: the cause of the crisis is Russia.

Regardless of which point of view he shares, whoever unleashed this tragedy must be held accountable for what is happening.

Ukraine has already lost Crimea. And, in my opinion, Ukraine will lose Donbass.

So the main question for me now remains: what other territories will Ukraine lose? Will it be only the territory of the east of the country?

In addition to territorial losses, it must be said that the Ukrainian economy has been destroyed. All this will have an extremely negative impact on the global economy.

Democrats will have problems in the fall, during the midterm elections to Congress.

It will become more difficult for the US to work with both Europe and China - especially with China, which poses the main potential threat to the US.

The conflict in Ukraine is pushing Russians closer to China. At the same time, Eastern Europe is becoming an extremely unstable region.

In general, the situation is catastrophic. And we need to understand who made this mess.

The generally accepted point in the US and in the West in general is that the Russians are to blame, and above all, Vladimir Putin.

But you know that there are people who do not share this point of view.

In particular, my point is that the West bears the main responsibility for what is happening today.

The reason for this: the erroneous decision in April 2006 to make Ukraine and Georgia part of NATO.

We wanted to integrate Ukraine into NATO, whatever the cost.

Even then, the Russians said that this was unacceptable.

Before that, they had already swallowed two stages of NATO expansion to the East - in 1999 and in 2004, but insisted that Ukraine and Georgia not be part of the new NATO expansion plan and said that for them it was an existential threat.

And it is obvious that in August 2008 there was already a conflict between Georgia and Russia over the possible membership of Georgia.

It is important to understand that the West's policy towards Ukraine took into account three important factors. The first and most important is the integration of Ukraine into NATO. Next is the integration of Ukraine into the EU. And, finally, the transformation of Ukraine into a pro-Western liberal democracy, including with the help of the Orange Revolution.

All these three prongs of the strategy were aimed at making Ukraine a pro-Western country near the borders of Russia.

And I repeat once again: already at that moment the Russians made it clear that this would never happen.

The first major crisis occurred in February 2014, triggered by a U.S.-backed coup d'état in Ukraine that ousted pro-Russian President Yanukovych and replaced him with a pro-American prime minister.

The Russians did not accept this, they constantly discussed with the West the prospects for Ukraine's integration into the EU and the prospects for NATO expansion.

How did it all end? There were two consequences: the Russians took Crimea from Ukraine because they did not want Sevastopol to become a NATO base, the second was that the Russians supported the start of a civil war in the east of the country, which has continued since 2014.

But in 2021 there was a second serious crisis.

In my opinion, the main reason for the crisis of December 2021 was the fact that Ukraine became a de facto member of NATO.

All this time, Russia has been told that it has nothing to fear from the expansion of NATO to the East, that there are no risks in Ukraine's entry into NATO.

From a de jure point of view, this was the case, but de facto it was not so. De facto, we supplied weapons to Ukraine. We have been arming this country since the days of Donald Trump, in 2017.

I emphasize: we armed Ukrainians, we trained them, expanded diplomatic ties.

All this has puzzled the Russians, especially in 2021.

In the summer of 2021, Ukraine used drones against pro-Russian forces in the Donbass. The Russians were then spooked when the British destroyer Defender entered the territorial waters of the Black Sea.

Further, in November 2021, our bombers flew thirteen miles from Russian territory.

These events confirm the de facto status of Ukraine in NATO, which I spoke about earlier.

And all this explains why the Russians, according to Sergey Lavrov, reached a boiling point in January, and why we found ourselves in this crisis.

So, two waves of NATO expansion, events in Georgia, events in Ukraine - all this determined the logic of the current crisis.

And the Russians decided they couldn't take it any longer, and so the crisis became full-blown.

The result of this crisis was the beginning of the Russian operation in Ukraine on February 24th.

You can watch John Mearsheimer's speech here.