{"id":1013547,"date":"2023-03-03T14:28:14","date_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:28:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dissidentvoice.org\/?p=138332"},"modified":"2023-03-03T14:28:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-03T14:28:14","slug":"why-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-on-24-february-2022-was-legal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/2023\/03\/03\/why-russias-invasion-of-ukraine-on-24-february-2022-was-legal\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Russia\u2019s Invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 Was Legal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under international law, \u201caggression\u201d (or \u201caggressive war\u201d) has never yet been defined so as to separate it clearly from \u201cdefensive war\u201d (or \u201cdefense\u201d), and this murkiness is the U.N.\u2019s most fundamental failure to-date, because the U.N. was supposed to have been formed in order to prevent a World War Three (WW III), which is impossible to do unless the meaning of \u201cdefense\u201d is clear and defense is clearly legal, and the meaning of \u201caggression\u201d is clear and aggression is clearly illegal; but, a definition is here employed in which \u201caggression\u201d is anything that endangers a country\u2019s existence or sovereignty over its legal territory, and \u201cdefense\u201d is anything that is provoked by (i.e., in response to<\/i>) \u201caggression\u201d and that consequently has been forced upon a country as the only reasonable alternative to allowing itself to be taken over by an \u201caggressor\u201d country. In this definition (a reasonable and practical definition \u2014 as opposed to the U.N.\u2019s absence of any<\/i> definition), \u201caggression\u201d can be perpetrated by any<\/i> means, not ONLY military, but also by such means as a coup, or international subversion, or illegal international sanctions \u2014 any means whatsoever that can be used in order to seize control over another country (i.e., over a different sovereign nation\u2019s Government). The U.S. Government has always opposed any definition of \u201caggression\u201d<\/a> and has always refused even to consider any proposed definition of it that would include anything else than military<\/i> aggression because America routinely uses non<\/i>-military forms of aggression (such as coups, and sanctions) and demands to be always able to continue<\/a> to do so without being called an \u201caggressor.\u201d This is simply a fact<\/a> and is the reason why the U.N. is nothing more than a talking-forum and a sump for refugees and any other problems that powerful countries intend to give only lip-service to addressing \u2014 it has no significant international power at all. (NOTE:<\/b> Anyone who doubts that the U.N. has utterly failed to define \u201caggression\u201d will see in the final paragraph here \u2014 which will be entirely in parentheses \u2014 a discussion of the U.N.\u2019s absurd, even outright circular, latest formal proposal to deal with that matter.)<\/p>\n

The war in Ukraine is further complicated in international law because clearly Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 constitutes a danger to Ukraine\u2019s sovereignty; but the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis established a fundamental case-law precedent thereafter, by means of which any major international power \u2014 in that instance the United States \u2014 has a right in international law to prevent any nearby nation from being able to be used by another major international power \u2014 in that instance the Soviet Union \u2014 to position military forces there that endanger the national security or sovereignty of a major power (in that instance of the United States); and, consequently, the U.S. Government was behaving defensively (against the Soviet Union), instead of aggressively (against Cuba), when it restricted Cuba\u2019s Government from enabling the Soviet Government to position its forces (specifically its nuclear forces) on that island.<\/p>\n

What will be argued here is that that international legal precedent applies universally in international law and that the war in Ukraine was started by the U.S. Government by means of its coup in Ukraine, which replaced an authentically neutral Government there by a rabidly anti-Russian government there (that possessed and possesses no legitimacy even under Ukraine\u2019s Constitution at that time<\/a>), and that Russia\u2019s Government consequently has an international-law right to take control over Ukraine\u2019s Government in order for Russia to be able to protect itself against America\u2019s Government \u2014 which is the aggressor here. Russia is the defender of its own sovereign territory; and Ukraine is merely the battlefield upon which this war between the aggressor America and the defender Russia is being waged.<\/p>\n

Since the topic here is international law, not any national<\/i> law, only national Governments are involved; and this means that a civil war, or war within<\/i> a country, is NOT even possibly<\/i> a matter that the U.N. can reasonably become involved in or have any authority to make pronouncements about. (Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who invented the U.N., did it with that aim \u2014 clear separation of international law from national law \u2014 in mind, but his immediate successor, who designed the U.N., nullified that and some other aspects of FDR\u2019s plan for the U.N. This is the reason why the U.N. fails. Truman was determined that the U.S. Government itself will ultimately take control over the entire world<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

The documentation of each step in this case is immediately accessible to the reader simply by clicking onto the links in it at any point where the reader wants to see what the evidence for the given allegation there is:<\/p>\n

On 8 February 2010, Britain\u2019s Guardian<\/i> headlined \u201cYanukovych set to become president as observers say Ukraine election was fair<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n

On 12 April 2010 was reported in Ukraine<\/a> that,<\/p>\n

The president of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych met in Washington with the American counterpart Barack Obama.<\/p>\n

On the Ukrainian side, the Minister of Foreign Affairs Konstantin Grishchenko, Minister for fuel and Energy Yurii Boyko, head of the presidential administration Serhiy Lovochkin, deputies head of the administration Hanna Herman and Yuri Lacnyy were also taking part in the meeting.<\/p>\n

The American side represents Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, national security advisor to the U.S. President James Jones, senior director of the U.S. National Security Council on non-proliferation Laura Holgate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

On 2 July 2010, Clinton again met privately with Yanukovych, this time in Kiev; and, on this occasion, spoke publicly about the meeting, and said<\/a> that while the United States supported Ukraine\u2019s independence, \u201cthe United States welcomes Ukrainian parliament’s decision to approve foreign military exercises on Ukrainian territory in 2010 and we thank Ukraine and the Ukrainian people for your important contributions to NATO and other international security operations.\u201d This means that the U.S. Government actually did not<\/i> support Ukraine\u2019s independence but instead wanted Ukraine to join its NATO military alliance that had repeatedly rejected Russia\u2019s requests to apply to join it. The U.S. wanted Russia\u2019s bordering nations in NATO, but not Russia itself. Apparently, Yanukovych again said no. That doomed him.<\/p>\n

By no later than June 2011, the United States Government commenced its planning for<\/a> the coup that occurred in Ukraine in February 2014.<\/p>\n

By no later than 1 March 2013, the U.S. Government in its Embassy in Ukraine, started training<\/a> members of the far-right Svoboda and Right Sector political organizations in Ukraine how to use the internet in order to raise a crowd to demonstrate against Ukraine\u2019s President, Viktor Yanukovych, to demand his removal from office.<\/p>\n

On 14 April 2014, an article was published in the Polish NIE<\/i> investigative-journalism magazine<\/a> saying that in the months prior to Yanukovych\u2019s overthrow, especially during the spring of 2013, paramilitaries of Ukraine\u2019s Right Sector organization were training secretly in Poland, under the direction of America\u2019s CIA, and Poland\u2019s Government.<\/p>\n

By no later than June 2013, the U.S. Government began soliciting for Pentagon-authorized U.S. contractors to convert a school in Sevastopol Crimea, in Ukraine<\/a>, near Russia\u2019s largest naval base, which is there. This was while Yanukovych was still in office, when the U.S. had no business in Crimea.<\/p>\n

On 19 November 2013, Yanukovych was informed the results by Ukraine\u2019s Academy of Sciences, of its analysis which he had requested, of the EU\u2019s offer to Ukraine to join the EU, which found that it required an up-front expenditure by Ukraine of $160 billion, which Ukraine did not have and the EU refused to supply<\/a>. So, whomever designed the EU\u2019s proposal knew, in advance, that Yanukovych would turn it down. That was to become the pretext for overthrowing him. It had been set up in advance.<\/p>\n

On 20 November 2013, the Maidan square anti-Yanukovych public demonstrations began. They were led by Andrei Parubiy (\u201cthe Commandant of Maidan\u201d), one of the two co-founders of the Social-Nationalist Party of Ukraine<\/a>, which the CIA had advised to change its name from that Nazi-inspired one, to the \u201cFreedom\u201d or Svoboda Party \u2014 which they did. Parubiy’s 2nd-in-command was the founder of the Right Sector Party, Dmitriy Yarosh, who organized the U.S.-backed paramilitaries there that had been trained in Ukraine and in Poland.<\/p>\n

The coup itself<\/a> occurred during 20-27 February 2014; and here<\/a> (and its transcript is here<\/a>) is its smoking-gun evidence that it was a U.S.<\/i> coup; and there is proof that even the EU\u2019s Foreign Affairs Minister at the time, Catherine Ashton, did not know that it had been any coup at all until her investigator in Kiev reported back to her on 26 February 2014 that it had been. (Here is that<\/i> phone-conversation<\/a>, and here is its transcript<\/a>.) So: Obama had kept the operation secret even from her. (In fact, Obama\u2019s designer of the coup, Victoria Nuland, in that smoking-gun phone-call, said \u201cFuck the EU\u201d: the EU were vassal-nations of the U.S. empire, and so didn\u2019t need to understand what was happening.)<\/p>\n

At that time, and throughout the post-Soviet history of polling of Ukrainians regarding their attitudes toward the EU and especially toward NATO, that attitude was around two-to-one that NATO was an enemy of Ukrainians<\/a>, and economic relations east of Ukraine were more important to Ukraine than economic relations west of Ukraine (the EU) were; but this situation reversed itself virtually overnight after America\u2019s 20-27 February 2014 coup. Still, in Crimea and Ukraine\u2019s southeast, NATO and the U.S. were viewed overwhelmingly as enemies, not friends<\/a> \u2014 and the U.S. Government itself knew this because it had commissioned some of those polls. Nonetheless: the U.S. Government insisted that Ukraine must treat as \u201cterrorists\u201d and ethnically cleanse away any residents in those increasingly breakaway regions who refused to accept the U.S.-imposed rulers as being their rulers<\/a>. And this was done, starting on 15 April 2014<\/a>. The war against the breakaway-supporters was officially labeled, by the new coup-government, an \u201cAnti-Terrorist Operation\u201d or \u201cATO\u201d for short. The voters for Yanukovich had to be cleared out, killed and\/or escaped into adjoining Russia<\/a>, so that anti-Russian politicians would win future Ukrainian elections, and the U.S. Government will continue to control Ukraine.<\/p>\n

The United States and its \u2018allies\u2019 (colonies, vassal-nations) insist upon having the right to place any weapons onto Russia\u2019s borders especially in Ukraine, because ONLY Ukraine borders less than 800 miles from The Kremlin; it borders only 300 miles from it, and is therefore by far the best place for the U.S. Government ultimately to place its missiles, because that would be only five minutes of missile-flying-time away and would therefore constitute its checkmate of Russia\u2019s Government \u2014 far too little time in which for The Kremlin to be certain that America had launched them and for the Kremlin thence to launch its retaliatory weapons. This is the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse and on steroids.<\/p>\n

On 17 December 2021, Russia submitted separately to the U.S. and to NATO extremely reasonable, even necessary, national-security proposals to discuss and negotiate with them, but instead got from both on 7 January 2022 resounding and contemptuous rejections of all of Russia\u2019s national-security concerns<\/a>. Since what were now clearly<\/i> Russia\u2019s mortal enemies were not approachable any other way than by means of Russia invading and taking control of Ukraine itself, that is what they did, on 24 February 2023. It was a self-protective act that America and its vassal nations had forced upon Russia, and which was done. This was, and is, essential self-defense, by Russia, against a long and consistent history of U.S.-and-allied aggression.<\/p>\n

The reason why the U.N., as presently constituted, is unable to define \u201caggression\u201d (not only the military forms of it but also and especially the non<\/i>-military forms, which precede<\/i> the military forms) is that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who invented and originally planned a U.N. that would have succeeded, died on 12 April 1945, and the U.N. that we have was instead designed by his immediate successor, Harry Truman, who despised him and wanted the U.S. Government itself to become the ultimate imperial Government<\/a> \u2014 a global dictator \u2014 over the entire world, which was a direct contradiction of what FDR had so carefully planned and intended: the U.N. as a federal global democracy<\/i> of nations, a democratic federal republic of nations, replacing all empires, and in possession of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial powers to do that.<\/p>\n

So: whereas we now have (as a direct result of what Truman did) no existing definition of \u201caggression\u201d and of \u201cdefense,\u201d and instead have a chaos in international laws of war, Russia is at least as much in the right, as America would have been in the Cuban Missile Crisis to launch an all-out invasion against Cuba and\/or the Soviet Union if the Soviet Union had refused to remove its missiles from Cuba. Russia didn\u2019t launch nuclear war against the U.S., but did launch a conventional war against Ukraine, which was forced upon Russia by the U.S. and NATO decisions to reject on 7 January 2022 Russia\u2019s essential national security demands.<\/p>\n

(CLOSING NOTE<\/b>: The U.N.\u2019s latest formal proposal to address its lack of a definition of \u201caggression\u201d was on 11 June 2010, and can be seen here<\/a>. It pertains to the Rome Statute that controls the International Criminal Court (ICC) \u2014 a body to which the U.S. Government never joined, so it is immune to. It says: \u201cCrime of aggression: 1. For the purpose of this Statute, \u201ccrime of aggression\u201d means the planning, preparation, initiation or execution, by a person in a position effectively to exercise control over or to direct the political or military action of a State, of an act of aggression which, by its character, gravity and scale, constitutes a manifest violation of the Charter of the United Nations. 2. For the purpose of paragraph 1, \u201cact of aggression\u201d means the use of armed force by a State against the sovereignty, territorial integrity or political independence of another State, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations. Any of the following acts, regardless of a declaration of war, shall, in accordance with United Nations General Assembly resolution 3314 (XXIX) of 14 December 1974, qualify as an act of aggression.\u201d Number 1 there entails the phrase \u201can act of aggression,\u201d and therefore this \u2018defintion is circular: it defines \u201caggression\u201d by relying upon a presumably already defined usage of the word \u201caggression,\u201d and is therefore blatantly stupid. Number 2 there uses the phrase \u201cinconsistent with the Charter of the United Nations,\u201d but the purpose here was supposed to be<\/i> to give meaning<\/i> to that term in the Charter<\/i>. The U.N.\u2019s Charter<\/a> employs the word \u201caggression\u201d 3 times: Articles Numbered 1, 39, and 53, but never defines it. That\u2019s the problem here \u2014 not a solution to it. However, this definition of \u201caggression\u201d does pertain to the U.N.-authorized ICC. And this definition does include as examples of \u201caggression\u201d: Article 8, #2, paragraphs e and f: \u201c(e) The use of armed forces of one State which are within the territory of another State with the agreement of the receiving State, in contravention of the conditions provided for in the agreement or any extension of their presence in such territory beyond the termination of the agreement; (f) The action of a State in allowing its territory, which it has placed at the disposal of another State, to be used by that other State for perpetrating an act of aggression against a third State.\u201d Notice that (f) uses the word \u201caggression\u201d in \u2018defining\u2019 \u201caggression\u201d \u2014 yet again that shocking stupidity. However, ignoring that for a moment: (f) clearly describes \u201caggression\u201d by Ukraine against Russia; (e) describes \u201caggression\u201d that\u2019s \u201cThe use of the armed forces of America which are within the territory of Ukraine with the agreement of Ukraine, in contravention of the conditions provided for in the agreement or any extension of their presence in Ukraine beyond the termination of the agreement\u201d \u2014 except that no such \u201cagreement\u201d exists or is known to exist \u2014 and if it does exist, then who, precisely, are the \u201caggressor(s)\u201d supposed to be? It doesn\u2019t say. So: (e) is also stupid. But (f) describes Ukraine\u2019s aggression against Russia (but entails circularity in doing so). Whether (f) also<\/i> would be categorizing Americ<\/i>a as being an \u201caggressor\u201d against Russia is unknown. However, beyond those problems: Nothing in that ICC \u2018definition\u2019 of \u201caggression\u201d would have bearing upon America\u2019s coup against Ukraine in 2014, which was the actual and precipitating initial act of aggression directly against Ukraine and indirectly (but also very powerfully) against Russia (and to which Russia then ultimately responded on 24 February 2022 by its invasion). Furthermore: None of the three nations \u2014 America, Russia, and Ukraine \u2014 have ratified the Rome Statute that authorizes the ICC<\/a>; so, none of the three can be prosecuted by the ICC; so, there can be, under the sole entity that the U.N. has authorized to try cases in international criminal law, no prosecution of any of these three.<\/p>\n

In conclusion<\/strong>: It is clear<\/i> that anyone who alleges that Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine is an international war crime or in any other way a violation of international law is a mere anti-Russia propagandist; and, moreover, even if<\/em> all three of these nations had ratified the Rome Statute, the only one that could be prosecuted for having committed an international war-crime, the crime of \u201caggression,\u201d would be Ukraine, though the ambiguity of (e) might possibly then allow prosecution of America too; but no prosecution could be allowed against Russia, because even then there would be no rational way to interpret anything that Russia has done in this matter as constituting \u201caggression.\u201d In the U.S.-and-allied countries, it\u2019s all propaganda; and, unfortunately, publics are stupid enough to believe it, so it\u2019s effective.)<\/p>The post Why Russia\u2019s Invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 Was Legal<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.\n

This post was originally published on Dissident Voice<\/a>. <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under international law, \u201caggression\u201d (or \u201caggressive war\u201d) has never yet been defined so as to separate it clearly from \u201cdefensive war\u201d (or \u201cdefense\u201d), and this murkiness is the U.N.\u2019s most fundamental failure to-date, because the U.N. was supposed to have been formed in order to prevent a World War Three (WW III), which is impossible [\u2026]<\/p>\n

The post Why Russia\u2019s Invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 Was Legal<\/a> first appeared on Dissident Voice<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58121,58160,377,787,33,24,376,8104,58164],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013547"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1013547"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013547\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1013548,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1013547\/revisions\/1013548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1013547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1013547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/radiofree.asia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1013547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}