In February, at the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, RCPB(ML) immediately issued a statement on the lies and disinformation from the US, Britain, NATO and other "Western" powers, and promoted full-on by the mainstream media to block any facts and information about Russia's aims and NATO's role in the conflict. The statement went to the heart of the matter of who provoked the conflict in saying: "The question which is central, to which these lies and disinformation draw a veil, is who is it that has been and is threatening the peace in Europe?"

Cartoon: Global Times

Now four months on it is emerging that the US, Britain and NATO have from the start being doing everything they can to block peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, as they also did to provoke the conflict. Now any thinking person recognises that the US, Britain and the NATO powers are using Ukraine as a proxy to escalate their own economic and military war against Russia. This is all at the expense of Ukraine and its people and the Russian people with the savage sanctions unleashed by the US and Britain.

Firstly, there has been, over many years, an almost complete blackout of Western news sources on the war inside Ukraine itself. Over the last eight years thousands of Ukrainians have died at the hands of the Kiev regime in east Ukraine, facts which have been recorded by the UN but not publicised. It is also well documented that in 2014 the US and EU backed and openly funded the Maidan coup that brought to power a regime openly hostile to Russia and the large Russian-speaking population of Ukraine, as well promoting neo-Nazi organisations, who led the coup, into the state apparatus and army. The first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that gave the status of regional languages to Russian and other minority languages. Then there was immediately a fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk which was carried out beginning in February 2014 and led to a militarisation of the situation and massacres in Odessa and Mariupol by the Kiev regime. Crimea voted in a referendum in March 2014 to secede from Ukraine to Russia. At the end of summer 2014, only the Donetsk and Lugansk regions, who had declared themselves Republics, remained. In fact, these Republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have a status of autonomy, as well as guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language.

Over the next few years, these Republics, whilst losing some ground, were undefeated. According to first-hand reports, they were armed thanks to the defection of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that went over to the "rebel" side. As the Ukrainian regime failures continued, tank, artillery and even anti-aircraft battalions swelled the ranks of the Republics. This forced the Kiev regime to commit to the Minsk Agreements which was also ratified by the UN [1]. The agreements gave autonomy to the Republics as part of Ukraine with terms being negotiated between representatives of the Republics and the Ukrainian Parliament. Whilst agreed by Ukraine, these Minsk agreements which did not suit the plans of the US, Britain and NATO have never been implemented.

Last year on March 24, 2021, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine, having been elected on the basis of seeking peace with Russia, instead issued a decree for the recapture of the Crimea, and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted in the Black Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in NATO reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. At the time, in April 2021, Workers' Weekly [2] reported that, "as some commentators have pointed out, the Anglo-US forces and NATO may not in fact be planning to attack Russia at this time but they are certainly unleashing the Ukrainian neo-Nazi forces against the Donbass, [Donetsk and Luhansk] and Crimea there by 'punishing' both the Ukraine and Russia at the expense of the peoples of the region. This is at the heart of these provocations that prompted Russia to say it 'will not stand aside' if it believes hostilities could lead to 'mass civilian casualties' in East Ukraine."

In July 2021, Britain provocatively incited Ukraine against Russia when it sent its destroyer HMS Defender into the territorial waters of Crimea, also as part of a NATO operation, Sea Breeze 21. Workers' Weekly [3] commented at the time that "the exercise of particular note to everyone is its dangerous warmongering scale and NATO's focus, specifically identifying it as war preparations" against Russia. NATO's exercise had an aim of backing allegations of Russia's "illegal and illegitimate annexation of Crimea and denounces its temporary occupation". In other words, as Workers' Weekly continued, "this NATO exercise has clearly been aimed at actions focused on reversing by force of arms a decision of the people of Crimea and Sevastopol to secede from Ukraine and join the Russian Federation in 2014. With these manoeuvres, the Anglo-US and NATO forces are dangerously heightening tensions and risks of war in the Black Sea and encouraging militarism in Ukraine."

On November 10, 2021, in Washington US Secretary of State Antony J Blinken and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba signed a US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership [4]. This Charter replaced a previous one, with the new Charter openly endorsing the aim of the retaking of Crimea from Russia and retaking the UN recognised autonomous Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine. The Charter that the US signed with Ukraine was in violation of the Minsk agreements and these activities of the US and Britain gave a clear indication that the US and NATO would back Ukraine in any military action with Russia. In fact, Zelensky boasted that it had at this time deployed some 350,000 troops to east and south of Ukraine who were dug in in trenches right across its own country in the east. Also, by this time Ukraine was conducting air operations in Donbass using drones, including at least one strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021.

On February 7 and 8, 2022, Emmanuel Macron went to meet with both Vladimir Putin and Volodymyr Zelensky. On February 11, reports show that in Berlin the meeting of political advisors of the leaders of the "Normandy format" negotiations ended in failure. They report that "Zelensky had not agreed to implement the Minsk agreement apparently under pressure from the United States". In other words, the continued refusal of the US, Britain and other powers not to support the implementation of the Minsk agreement was a major factor in the conflict which their media never mention.

On February 17, US President Joe Biden announced that Russia would attack the Ukraine in the next few days. How did he know this? Some commentators suggest that most likely reason was because on February 16 the Ukrainian artillery started to increase the shelling of the population of Donbass dramatically. The daily reports of the OSCE observers show this (see chart). Biden was most likely aware of this. Indeed, more than this: what was the US and Britain's involvement in this heavy shelling by Ukraine of the Donbass from February 16? It is a fact that has been further revealed that the involvement of US, British military, French and other advisers and special forces have been present in the Ukrainian armed forces both many years before and after the conflict began. Naturally, neither the US, Britain, the EU, nor NATO, nor any Western government and their media reacted to this. They had absolutely no concern as to the impossible situation that Vladimir Putin and Russia's Parliament was put into by NATO's provocative actions [5]. Russia's Parliament was faced with the situation that they either recognise Donbass and Lugansk and support them militarily, or they stand by and watch the people of the Donbass region being crushed by NATO-backed Ukrainian forces, with NATO at the same time backing Ukraine in assembling its army to invade the Crimea which Russia had claimed as its territory.

Lifting the veil on NATO's proxy war in Ukraine against Russia is to expose and reveal that the US-led NATO, with its close ally Britain, are the real threat to peace in Europe. This requires the peoples of Britain to further oppose the warmongering, lies and disinformation and continue to take stands and actions for peace.

No to this US/NATO-provoked war in Europe!
Britain Out of NATO!
NATO must withdraw from Eastern Europe and be dismantled!
Fight for an Anti-War Government!

Notes
1. Minsk - The UN agreements required negotiations between the two republics and the Ukraine government, which have never occurred.
https://comw.org/pda/fulltext/UNSC-Res-2202-Minsk.pdf
2. http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-21/ww21-13/ww21-13.htm
3. http://www.rcpbml.org.uk/wwie-21/ww21-21/ww21-21-05.htm
4. US-Ukraine Charter on Strategic Partnership
https://www.state.gov/u-s-ukraine-charter-on-strategic-partnership/
5. It was under this article 51 of the UN Charter that Vladimir Putin justified Russia's Special Military Operation - the right of individual or collective self defence:
Article 2.4 of the UN Charter "expressly prohibits Member States from using or threatening force against each other" except in two cases - one of which is self-defence - contained in article 51:
Article 51 of the UN Charter
"Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security."

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