By ALEXANDER DOLITSKY
Updated: Why West provoked and prolongs Russia-Ukraine war?
Thirty-five years ago, this spring, Mikhail Gorbachev, then President of the Soviet Socialist Republic, was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Humanities from the University of Alaska Southeast. Then-UAS Chancellor Marshall Lind invited Soviet Ambassador Yuri Dubinin to accept this award on Gorbachev’s behalf.
Dubinin arrived at Juneau with an entourage of six Soviet officials. Back then, I taught Russian Studies and archaeology at UAS and was assigned to accompany the delegation. In fact, Dubinin was the first Soviet ambassador to visit Alaska, post-World War II.
Dubinin was the Soviet ambassador to the United States during much of the turbulent 1980s’ perestroika period. In a Washington post piece, he described himself as a “popularizer of perestroika”—the radical reform efforts of Gorbachev. Dubinin also oversaw opening the Russian embassy to news conferences under Gorbachev’s initiatives.
In Alaska, the mid-1980s through 1990s and early 2000s was an enthusiastic period of the Soviet/Russian–Alaska relationships in nearly all cultural, educational and governmental spheres. I was a busy person, translating, almost daily, for all involved in the Russian-Alaska affairs; the enrollment in my Russian language classes at UAS was over the limit, with a long waiting list. Indeed, it was a promising hope to end Cold War tensions and begin a new era of mutually productive and friendly relationship between two great nations.
Nevertheless, whether under Soviet/Russian leadership of Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Chernenko, Andropov, Gorbachev, Yeltsin or Putin, the U.S. and West never stopped its Cold War policies of undermining USSR/Russia. In the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter provided military and logistical support to the Afghan Mujahideen, the precursor to the Taliban, thereby provoking Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979.
In fact, every successive U.S. president continued covert and overt interference in countries on Russia’s southern borders, including former Soviet Central Asian republics of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kirgizstan, Tadzhikistan and Turkmenistan, and Georgia and Ukraine.
The ideological architect of the strategy to contain the Soviet Union during Carter presidency was Zbigniew Brzezinski—the U.S. national security advisor and antagonist of the Soviet regime. Indeed, Ukraine played a pivotal role in the so-called Brzezinski Doctrine, which identifies the country as key to preventing Russian–European economic and political integration. Still today, the U.S. foreign establishment is rife with Brzezinski proteges and anti-Russian Cold War ideology.
With Ukraine, because of Brzezinski’s anti-Russian ideology, the West made a major strategic bet that eventually failed. The crippling sanctions against Russia since 2014 were expected to crater the Russian economy, resulting in a popular uprising and leading to the replacement of Vladimir Putin with a pro-Western leader. The hope was that this wishful dream would lead to a pro-Western globalist taking control of the Kremlin, resulting in a boon for Wall Street, as Russia is the richest country in the world in terms of natural resources.
With the growing demand for natural resources, Russia represents a rich investment opportunity in the unforeseen future. However, these Western sanctions against Russia completely failed. In 2024, European Union’s GDP grew 1.7%, while Russia’s grew 4.2%.
Soon after the dissolution of the Soviet Union—as early as 1993—President Bill Clinton started pushing for NATO expansion in Europe, including Ukraine, to which many strategically thinking American sociologists and historians strongly objected. This is how the slippery road to the current crisis might escalate into potential nuclear conflicts.
After gaining its independence in 1991, Ukraine could expect a bright future. At that time, Ukraine (with exception of Russia) was the largest country (territory) in Europe, with a population of nearly 52 million citizens, and sixth largest GDP in Europe. Today, Ukraine population is under 30 million citizens with lowest GDP per capita in Europe (per capita GNI of US$3,540).
Having vital industrial and agricultural sectors, a favorable climate, and fertile land, the country needed effective anti-corruption reforms, a certain level of autonomy for its regions with large Russian ethnic populations, and, most importantly, neutral status with no membership in any military blocs to become one of the most prosperous European states within its 1991 borders.
Instead, billions of dollars from the U.S., Canada, other Western countries, and George Soros poured into Ukraine—not to boost its economy but to reformat public opinion, which overwhelmingly favored neutral status and opposed joining NATO. This influence from the West helped to instigate the “Orange” revolution regime change in 2004, and then “Maidan” in 2014, which was directly coordinated by then-Vice President Joe Biden with Victoria Nuland from the White House in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv.
The new Ukrainian government, selected by Washington and the West, immediately declared its intention to join NATO. In fact, if not for this 2014 coup, there would be no annexation of the Crimean Peninsula by Russia in 2014, no war today in East Ukraine, and no risk of potential nuclear World War III.
In short, the U.S. and Western policies of using Ukrainians as cannon fodder to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia denigrates and contradicts the fundamental spirit and soul of America itself. While claiming to adhere to Western/Judeo-Christian values, the U.S. and European Union provoked and continues to fund a prolonged war between two nations that have lived together for over three centuries and are bound together by close historical, linguistic, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties.
No one can predict how the Russian-Ukrainian/West conflict will end; but one thing is certain that the Russian government and people do not take ultimatums very well. Recent pledges and demands of the European Union to accelerate and increase military assistance to Ukraine will only prolong this war. Indeed, as drums of World War III keep banging, those who are not among decision-makers or on the battlefields should, at least, try to clear the smog of this war.
Alexander Dolitsky was born and raised in Kiev in the former Soviet Union. He received an M.A. in history from Kiev Pedagogical Institute, Ukraine in 1976; an M.A. in anthropology and archaeology from Brown University in 1983; and enrolled in the Ph.D. program in anthropology at Bryn Mawr College from 1983 to 1985, where he was also lecturer in the Russian Center. In the USSR, he was a social studies teacher for three years and an archaeologist for five years for the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences. In 1978, he settled in the United States. Dolitsky visited Alaska for the first time in 1981, while conducting field research for graduate school at Brown. He then settled first in Sitka in 1985 and then in Juneau in 1986. From 1985 to 1987, he was U.S. Forest Service archaeologist and social scientist. He was an Adjunct Assistant Professor of Russian Studies at the University of Alaska Southeast from 1985 to 1999; Social Studies Instructor at the Alyeska Central School, Alaska Department of Education and Yukon-Koyukuk School District from 1988 to 2006; and Director of the Alaska-Siberia Research Center from 1990 to 2022. From 2006 to 2010, Alexander Dolitsky served as a Delegate of the Russian Federation in the United States for the Russian Compatriots program. He has done 30 field studies in various areas of the former Soviet Union (including Siberia), Central Asia, South America, Eastern Europe and the United States (including Alaska). Dolitsky was a lecturer on the World Discoverer, Spirit of Oceanus, and Clipper Odyssey vessels in the Arctic and Sub-Arctic regions. He was a Project Manager for the WWII Alaska-Siberia Lend Lease Memorial, which was erected in Fairbanks in 2006. Dolitsky has published extensively in the fields of anthropology, history, archaeology and ethnography. His more recent publications include Fairy Tales and Myths of the Bering Strait Chukchi, Ancient Tales of Kamchatka, Tales and Legends of the Yupik Eskimos of Siberia, Old Russia in Modern America: Living Traditions of the Russian Old Believers in Alaska, Allies in Wartime: The Alaska-Siberia Airway During World War II, Spirit of the Siberian Tiger: Folktales of the Russian Far East, Living Wisdom of the Russian Far East: Tales and Legends from Chukotka and Alaska, and Pipeline to Russia: The Alaska-Siberia Air Route in World War II.
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In Russia you’d be sent to a gulag for criticizing the government.
Maybe you forget, being a toadie, but when the USSR broke up Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power with over 1,800 warheads. Ukraine gave them back to Russia in return for Russia agreeing to respect Ukrainian borders as they stood and the West providing economic assistance.
How did those Russian assurances work out for Ukraine?
2014 Russia annexes Ukraine’s Crimea.
2014 Russian supported rebels and Russian troops try to make Donbas a part of Russia.
2022 Russia invades.
Lesson: keep your nukes.
akvoter,
if you publically denigrate an educated academic (very few have been produced in our American universities for decades) of “being a toadie” you should first review historical facts and avoid displaying ignorance of basic facts.
The administratively constructred boundaries of the Ukranian Socialist State which became an independent nation upon the dissolution of the Soviet Union owned no nuclear warheads.
The nuclear warheads deployed on the Soviet Unions’ western border in what became Ukraine belonged to Russia. All warheads were removed under agreement with the Clinton administration.
Have you heard of the nuclear non proliferation treaty?
There never was any question that these weapon systems belonged to Russia, until NATO/US were being defeated on the eastern steppes and urban centers of the Donetsk region.
The citizens of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to return to Russia.
What you call rebels of the Donetsk and Lugansk region were successfully defending their families from incessant artillery cluster munitions strikes on civilian targets by our installed, funded and commanded Kiev regime military.
Suggesting that an utterly corrupt, unstable and incompetent regime should use nuclear weapons, if they had them, is the definition of insanity.
The assurances given to Russia that NATO would never move east, and launching American supplied, crewed and commanded cruise missiles into Russia is an existential threat dealt with accordingly.
And there are no gulags remaining for dissidents to be sent.
Toadie says what?
Stop pandering to Russia and let the Ukrainian people have self determination. Ukraine threw out a corrupt regime in 2014. Putin started talking about restoring the Iron Curtain in 2005, long before the Crimean invasion. Putin wont stop until his military strength is diminished.
Pandering to Russia?!?
It’s chess, not checkers.
Your grasp of contemporary history is weak at best.
The Ukranian citizens in Crimea, Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaparozhe regions voted to cecede from a country we made into a militarized, terrorist/criminal dictatorship and rejoin the Russian Federation.
Their men formed militias which successfully prevented the massive army we funded and trained from taking their communities. The Kiev regime military used the artillery we gave them to shell civilian apartments, killing women and children. One of the tactics was to shell an apartment, causing casualties, and then target the same location 30 minutes later to kill the survivors and medics.
There was a time Americans supported the right of self determination and independence. Instead of supporting wars of aggression to exploit the resources and peoples of foreign lands.
Sir,
You should be teaching History and International Politics at UAF. This is brilliant writing. The professors of History at UAF are lame and hyper-partisan. It’s been that way at UAF for decades. And it’s the reason why I moved out of state to get my History degrees. Keep up your brilliant writing.
Alexander has the experience of not just academic trials, but he has been on the front lines of some major events too. MRAK is lucky to have him as a guest writer and ally. And, he is genuinely a nice person, unlike some of the old sourpuss writers in Fairbanks and Anchorage.
I always thought I was the best writer and smartest history buff in Alaska. Please send your donations to my Facebook page. My liquor shelf is running low …….again.
Alexander:
Thank you for the courage to publish this article about current relations between the United States and Russia. I have worked off and on in the former USSR and Russian Federation since the late 1980s. For much of the time on projects that I worked on, Ukrainians and Russians worked together and with respect. Sadly it has been US foreign policy and policies of western European countries since the end of the Cold War that has greatly contributed to the current crisis. And the way we have humiliated Russian athletes now for more than 2 decades is truly despicable. We can only hope that relations can be repaired but it will take a generation before we turn the corner.
Bundtzen, the fact that a highly educated author who is personally knowledgeable with the subject written needs courage to publish it
illustrates just how controlled our media is.
And how conditioned a largely “conservative” segment of the public that reads MRAK is to government propaganda narratives.
I appreciate that MRAK allows for an open discourse of varying views on their media platform.
Alex, you have written a concise and remarkably accurate summation of our State Department’s project Ukraine. It is rare to see a truthful, concise rendition of historical facts unfolding in our media. Our media is less reliable than the Soviet era Pravda was, now all narrative tales, to manipulate an overwhelmingly historically ignorant and partisan divided public. The partisan divide is simply a tool to maintain control of the citizens by the same permanent governance class to maintain an iron grip on power.
Our country replaced Great Britain as the dominant global empire during WWII. Ukraine is simply the latest failed state we created in endless coups, invasions and meddling since 1945 in the futile attempt to expand and maintain a massive overseas empire. A large percentage of the national debt has been generated by the excessive costs.
We are repeating the failed model as all the previous historical empires before ours. Exhausting national wealth to fight and contain endless competitors and revolts in vassal states.
Britain degenerated into a militarized narco state, exploiting Indian serfs in opium production and aggressively waging war against a then weak China to force its’ importation and additional addiction of its’ people.
The 1991 modern construct of a “state” termed Ukraine was always fragile. The perfect victim for the predatory hyenas in our State Department/CIA/Pentagon complex to exploit its’ resources and pressure the ethnic fissures to create a festering ulcer to weaken Russia. Our own president Biden was personally enriching his family, among many others, by destroying Ukraine.
The ethnic Russians were targeted with all manner of language, cultural and religious oppression to create live bait to force Russia to react.
The actual inhabitants of Crimea, Kherson, Zaparozhe, Donetsk and Lugansk voted for separation from a failed state that inflicted thousands of war crimes against their women and children, using American weapons and munitions and join the RF.
One would think that America, as the self proclaimed model democracy, spreading freedom and self governance principles worldwide would be supportive. But no, we were too busy building a subservient dictatorship.
The local militias successfully fought our installed and paid for Kiev regime military for 8 years. Merkel had to step in to lie to Russia to save this regime military when it was trapped in a cauldron by separatist militias.
The fact that Trump has made serious moves to restore normalized relationships with the RF creates hope for a peaceful future, and diffusing the escalation that could trigger WWIII.
We still have opportunity to move toward mutually beneficial trade and constructive projects with Russia that benefit everyone, or continue on the current reckless course. The more sanctions and violent aggression we impose, the stronger and more motivated Russia becomes. And the more isolated and indebted we become.
This is a good piece by Dolitsky and he certainly knows what he is talking about, unlike some of the posters here who just want to call him names for telling the truth. I thought he could have mentioned that Ukraine joining NATO to Russia is the same as Cuba was to us in the 60’s where we came very close to WWIII. William Burns, forner head of the CIA said exactly the same thing. And Dolitsky was right o name Victoria Nuland, a Dick Cheney protege who went into Ukraine with $5 billion USD funded by USAID to create a conflict. It is popular these days to cast Russia as an aggressive and warlike nation, and there is some truth to that as centuries old European conflicts continue to play out. And once Europe turns out to be a complete mess, the US has to step in again to save them. On the other hand, what is the nation that has been continuously at war for the past 50 years? Well, that would be us. Thank god we have a President that is proactively seeking peace. We should be behind him 100%.
“two Christian nations that have lived together for over three centuries and are bound together by close historical, religious, economic, cultural, and family ties” but mostly by political force.
“The actual inhabitants”- as opposed to the original inhabitants?
Our permanent government State Department, Pentagon and MIC mistakenly planned for project Ukraine as a quagmire trap for the Russian Federation.
The asinine plan included sanctions which were going to destroy the Russian economy and the massive Ukrainian military funded by the US, armed with NATO weapon systems, trained, ISR integrated and commanded by the US from bases in Germany was going to humiliate the “incompetent” Russian Army. This would lead to regime change in Russia, replacing a sovereign nationalist government with a western dominated, rear end kissing, compliant puppet government.
Sanctions are a blessing as they have strengthened Russia by forcing them to wean themselves from the utterly corrupt and predatory American dominated global financial system. Russia’s successful defiance of our predatory global hegemonic dominance strengthens the resolve of other BRICS member states resulting in a viable alternative for countries to retain their wealth.
American military planning and leadership at both the strategic and tactical levels have been shown to be incompetent. Our weapon systems are proven to be 2nd rate in modern combat against a peer military.
The Patriot systems are near useless, and the latest F-16 shot down was taken out in the air by a Russian drone. Our F-16s are unable to get anywhere near the line of contact to be of any practical use. They do remain high value targets taken out parked on tarmacs by kinzhal missiles.
Trump is wasting his 2nd presidency by continuing the carnage when he could simply order our military out, end funding the Kiev regime and focus on our country.
Interesting. No mention of China, North Korea, and Iran. Russia’s been an active player in the Middle East providing support for Iran’s nuclear dreams. I appreciate well written posts but respectfully disagree. NATO is a deterrent to Russian aggression.
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