Dear Editor,
I have been reading your articles on Ukraine with great interest. Some of my friends say that both the US-led NATO and Russia deserve to be condemned. The facts, however, do not justify such a position. To say both sides are to blame misses the point.
Russia has been saying for the past 15 years that it will not tolerate American or NATO troops on its borders, and hence will not accept Ukraine joining NATO. Russia cannot live with nuclear weapons in Ukraine, just as America would not tolerate Russian nukes in Cuba.
The American rulers do not want to send any troops into Ukraine to fight the Russian forces, but they keep sending weapons to egg on the Ukrainians to fight a war that they cannot hope to win. The Russian armed forces are already in control of the eastern part of that country, which has historically been part of Russia and is populated mostly by Russian speaking people.
If the US and NATO stop supplying weapons, thousands of Ukrainian lives can be saved. The best course is to let Russia and Ukraine negotiate to ensure that Ukraine becomes a neutral zone. The US does not want to do that, because they profit from war and also because they want to destroy the Russian gas pipelines through which a large part of Germany’s energy needs are being met today.
It is certainly the US which deserves to be condemned for using Ukrainians as a pawn in their dirty game.
Yours sincerely,
Sudipta Mukherjee
Kolkata