Russia under Putin is fighting against American imperialism: Journalist

Russia under President Vladimir Putin has taken on the role of an anti-imperialist power, placing it at odds with the United States, the sole imperial power seeking global hegemony, according to Patrick Lawrence, a US political commentator and foreign affairs journalist.

Lawrence said in an interview with Press TV on Thursday that Putin was left with no choice but to launch a military operation in Ukraine by the United States.

Putin on February 24 ordered a “special military operation” in Ukraine’s Donbas region. Putin said his country was defending Russian-speaking communities through the "demilitarisation and de-Nazification" of Ukraine so that their neighbor became neutral and no longer threatened Russia.

US President Joe Biden, however, called the Russian action an "unprovoked and unjustified attack," and the mainstream American media described it as the biggest assault on a European state since World War Two attack by Russia.

Lawrence said, “The Russian intervention in Ukraine is very regrettable but very necessary.”

“It is important to put events in their proper context, with history and chronology in mind, to understand this. It was clear from President Putin’s February 22 announcement of his plans— February 22 being the date of the US-cultivated coup in 2014—that he made his determination with great reluctance,” he said.

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The analyst said that the US “left him no choice, as it persisted in sending weapons, trainers, intelligence units and so forth into Ukraine.”

“We have to look at this with a clear eye, and we must name things for what they are. This is a confrontation between an imperial power bent on global domination and an anti-imperialist power. It is useful to consider in this context the February 4 joint statement Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping issued in Beijing. They are calling for a new world order of a kind the global community greatly needs. I see the Ukraine crisis as one dimension of this larger project,” he stated.

“Great turns in history do not always come gracefully or peaceably,” he added.    

The journalist said, “It is ever more evident that the US intends, and may have intended from the first, to create a conflict that would bog down Russian forces in a classic quagmire while leaving Ukrainians to wage some kind of low-level insurgency that cannot possibly succeed.”

“Why else would the Biden administration continue to send in billions of dollars’ worth of weaponry to a corrupt regime that has no chance of victory? What Washington did to the Soviets in Afghanistan three decades ago—arm the mujahideen to entrap Soviet forces—it is now doing in Ukraine—this time using an army that is plainly infested with Nazis. There is no thought in Washington for the people of Ukraine,” he pointed out.     

‘NATO seeks regime change in Moscow’

Commenting on the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)’s intentions, Lawrence said, “The ultimate objective of NATO’s eastward expansion is regime change in Moscow along the same lines as the so-called color revolutions in the immediate post-Soviet decades.”

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An American political analyst says the United States engineered “the Ukraine crisis in order to hurt not only Russia but the emerging bloc of countries seeking economic independence from the US."

“This is why Putin was forced to conclude the Russian Federation faced an existential threat on its border with Ukraine (and on its border with Belarus, I might add). Putin had no choice. As he said in his February 22 speech, it was his duty to Russia and Russians to act. I agree with him. NATO has to be stopped, and it is now clear there is only one way to accomplish this,” he concluded.

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