The Truth About Ukraine and It's War With Russia

The Truth About Ukraine and It's War With Russia

August 16, 2025

Professor Jeffrey D. Sachs

"They're sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine."

~Lindsey Graham, U.S. Republican Senator, about U.S. and NATO's interest

While the U.S. empire, and its mouthpieces in the corporate media beat the drums for war while labeling Putin an imperialist warmonger, few bother to mention the decades of intensive American "meddling" in Russian and Ukrainian affairs that have inexorably led to the current crisis.

Regarding the Ukraine War, the Joe Biden administration has repeatedly and falsely claimed that the Ukraine War started with an unprovoked attack by Russia on Ukraine on February 24, 2022. In fact, the war was provoked by the United States, in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.

A far better approach for Russia might have been to step up diplomacy with Europe and with the non-European controlled world to explain and oppose U.S. militarism and unilateralism. In fact, the relentless U.S. push to expand NATO is widely opposed throughout the world, so Russian diplomacy rather than war would likely have been effective.

Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University, where he was formerly director of The Earth Institute. He worked on the topics of sustainable development and economic development.

https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/the-war-in-ukraine-was-provoked-and-why-that-matters-if-we-want-peace

https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-articles/wgtgma5kj69pbpndjr4wf6aayhrszm

Original: https://youtu.be/1uML1QkFWzI