US President Joe Biden on Monday said that India was an exception among its major allies, with its “shaky” response to punishing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The remark comes amid disquiet in the West over India's refusal to outrightly condemn Russia's aggression. Biden lauded other Washington allies including NATO, the European Union, and key Asian partners, for their united stance against President Vladimir Putin.

Following Biden’s remarks, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, who was recently on a three-nation tour of India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh, said that democracies like India must stand against “autocracies like Russia and China”.

On Tuesday (22 March), Nuland held a meeting with External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar in New Delhi. In the meeting, they reportedly discussed the Indo-Pacific region, ways to expand bilateral ties, and the crisis in Ukraine.

Earlier, delegation-level talks were held between Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla and Nuland on Monday (21 March). A statement issued after the Shringla-Nuland talks held under the framework of India-US Foreign Office Consultations (FOC) said both sides looked forward to the India-US 2+2 ministerial meeting.

“Evolution In India’s Position” on Russia

"Democracies need to stand together and evolve their position vis-a-vis Russia because of the choices Putin has made. Democracies must stand against autocracies like Russia and China," said Nuland in a TV interview, adding that she has conveyed the same to the Indian officials.

"We know about the historic relationship and defense relationship between India and Russia at a time when the US was not prepared to have that kind of relationship. But times have changed now. They've changed in terms of the US and European willingness to be strong defense and security partners with India," claimed Nuland.

In the interview, Nuland said that in her meetings with External Affairs Minister Jaishankar and Foreign Secretary Shringla, she discussed that the US could work together with India “to find alternative sources” to fulfill India’s energy and security needs.

Ms. Nuland said the Russian invasion was "vicious and inhumane", and hospitals and schools were being bombed.

"You see, in four weeks, how vicious, violent and inhumane this invasion has been. Maternity hospitals, apartment buildings, orphanages, schools, opera houses hit and so in capitals around the world and Washington DC, the sheer horror of this is having a profound effect," said the top official.

"I think there is an evolution in thinking going on here in India as well, and we see an evolution in position, but that's why we need to talk."

As India "continues to evolve its position", the US can offer help, she asserted.

The official said the amount of energy that India buys from Russia is relatively small and "we have made it clear in our conversations that we understand that's not something India can cut off immediately". When the US and other countries decided to cut off Russian oil imports completely, Washington did not expect "all democratic partners" to do so immediately, because of its historical legacy, said the official. 

"But what we do want to do is to work together to find alternative sources over time. And that's what we hope to do with India - whether it's about the security relationship, the energy relationship... Because Russia has proven itself to be unreliable and to be a violator of international law," Ms. Nuland told NDTV.

Nuland’s Role In The 2014 “Regime Change” In Ukraine

A U.S. diplomat for 32 years, Nuland served as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from September 2013 until January 2017 under President Obama and Secretary Kerry. She was State Department Spokesperson during Secretary Hillary Clinton’s tenure, and U.S. Ambassador to NATO during President George W. Bush’s second term, 2005-2008. Nuland also served as Special Envoy and chief negotiator on the Treaty on Conventional Arms Control in Europe from 2010-2011.

According to reports, Nuland played a significant role in the 2014 Maidan 'revolution' of Ukraine. There are leaked audio recordings of her conversation with then US ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt which indicate that the US (and Nuland) was directly involved in this 2014 'revolution'.

The discussion between the two officials includes a detailed review of which right-wing opposition figures Washington is working to install in office, and how it is using the United Nations to rubber-stamp the operation. While Germany and other European powers have worked closely with the Obama administration in promoting the violent protests against President Viktor Yanukovych, the leaked phone call reveals tensions between the imperialist powers. At one point Nuland tells Pyatt, “Fuck the EU.”

The discussion, posted anonymously on YouTube, underscores the thoroughly cynical character of Washington’s public diplomacy. The Obama administration’s rhetoric about “democracy” and the Ukrainian people’s right to determine their future is a charade, concocted for public consumption. Behind the scenes, government officials speak frankly with one another about the real agenda—advancing Washington’s geo-strategic and economic interests in Eastern Europe by installing pro-US and anti-Russian puppet figures in the Ukrainian capital.

Nuland continues: “Yats [Yatsenyuk] is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience.” Pyatt later warns Nuland that “Klitschko has been the top dog” within the opposition, and that she will need to “move fast on all this stuff” and speak with the UDAR leader as part of their “personality management” of the opposition leadership.

The utter criminality of Washington’s drive to install a pliant regime in Kiev sharply emerges in Nuland and Pyatt’s discussion of Oleh Tyahnybok, the leader of the neo-fascist All-Ukrainian Union (Svoboda) party. Nuland describes Tyahnybok as one of the “big three” within the opposition leadership. The State Department operative goes on to tell Pyatt that “what [Yatsenyuk] needs [after he is installed in office] is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside—he needs to be talking to them four times a week.”

These remarks confirm that there is no confusion whatsoever within the Obama administration that it is working in partnership with fascist movements in Ukraine.

Notably, Nuland was the diplomat who set the points for the establishment of loan guarantees amid the Ukraine crisis, including a US$1 billion loan guarantee in 2014, and the provision of non-lethal aid to the Ukrainian military and border guard. While serving as the State Department's chief diplomat on the Ukraine crisis, Nuland galvanized European allies to take a firm stance against Russian expansionism.

Many experts believe that Victoria Nuland was the “mastermind” behind the 22 February 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine, aimed at overthrowing the democratically elected government of President Viktor Yanukovych, who was opposed to the assimilation of Ukraine by the European Union and NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation).

In her leaked telephone conversation with Ambassador Pyatt, Nuland revealed her wish for Oleh Tyahnybok (one opposition leader) to work with the new regime in Ukraine.

According to this report, Oleh Tyahnybok, the presidential candidate of the far-right Svoboda Party in 2014, is an open "Nazi-sympathizer". His party, which was at the center of the "regime change" protests, espouses an ultra-nationalist, anti-Russian agenda, and its critics say that the Svoboda Party is an anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi organization.

At the end of December 2013. Nuland was seen handing over cookies to anti-Yanukovych protestors, who were stripped of his presidency on 22 February 2014. Following this, Arseni Petrovich Yatsenyuk, a lawyer and politician, was made the Prime Minister of Ukraine on 27 February 2014.

The Obama administration was revealed by National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden to have erected a vast surveillance network to eavesdrop on the telephone and Internet communications of the world’s population, including heads of state and government.

Nuland’s And “Regime Change”

Apart from being a career diplomat, Nuland is also believed to be a lobbyist for leading weapon manufacturers in her country.

During her two-year stint as adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney between 2003 and 2005, Nuland, is said to have promoted the invasion and occupation of Iraq.

In his second term, President Bush appointed Nuland as the US ambassador to NATO. Between 2005 and 2008, Nuland used her time at NATO to organize international support for legitimizing the American occupation of Afghanistan.

Nuland continues to be a “respected” diplomat and is still consulted at the highest levels of the US government.

Given her anti-Russia stance and her public criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin, experts believe that Nuland’s presence in the negotiations between Washington and Moscow has further clouded the possibilities of finding a diplomatic solution to the ongoing Russia-Ukraine crisis.

Conclusion

India is a country in which attacks on sovereignty and grabbing of territory by Pakistan and later China have spanned 75 years and counting. Barring a few statements of concern on recent incidents and a still insufficient level of weapons sales, Washington under Joe Biden has done nothing. What is taking place to the Ukrainian people is horrible, although the causes of that may differ from the accounts retailed in most US or European newspapers. There is an obvious frenzy in the Atlanticist media, as report after report gives details of what the Ukrainians say are Russian atrocities.

Each such report is followed by calls from discussants on television and contributors in print and online media to accelerate the supply of still more deadly weapons to Ukrainian forces, which from the period of the western-backed Regime Change Movement in 2014 has mostly consisted of militias who are not exactly admirers of Russian-speaking individuals, including in Ukraine. There is a cry for even the S-300 and other Russian weapons platforms to get transferred from former Warsaw Pact partners to Ukraine. And yet it is evident that Biden, Johnson, and Stoltenberg do not believe that transferring such supplies would provide a reason for Putin to expand the war into the former Warsaw Pact zone so that such transfers cease. Why countries such as the US, France, Britain, and Germany are directing petrol instead of water into the cauldron that Ukraine has become is beyond logical understanding. World wars, it is said, begin by accident. This is not true. Germany under its clueless Kaiser launched World War I by its overconfidence in the abilities of Hindenburg and Ludendorff to prevail over even France.

That country, assisted by Britain and belatedly by the US, held its own and at great cost in lives and treasure, held the Kaiser’s minions to a stalemate that proved fatal to the survival of the Hohenzollerns and to the country that the last Kaiser Wilhelm led to disaster. After taking over France while allowing the British military to escape to safety by the stupidity of the former corporal turned Fuehrer, who was the Supreme Warlord of Germany during World War II, Hitler regarded the takeover of the USSR as child’s play, as apparently did their generals until they were held up outside the gates of Moscow, Leningrad and Stalingrad (whose names that were steeped in Russian history were changed in the 1990s by another disastrous leader, Boris Yeltsin) after less than six months of what seemed to the rest of the world a one-sided conflict. Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill disagreed with this view, and that fateful initial stalemate of the Wehrmacht proved them to be right. By 1943, helped by weapons mostly from the US and by intelligence on German capabilities secretly transferred from the UK to the USSR through a network of Soviet agents of British nationality, it was clear except to a psychotic or psychedelic mind that the Wehrmacht was facing the prospect of doom at the hands of the Soviet armies. Hitler was aware of the fate that Stalin had reserved for him if captured by Soviet forces, so he decided to pre-empt such an outcome by first killing himself, his Alsatian dog Blondi and his wife Eva, in decreasing order of importance to Der Fuehrer.

Biden has flagged the conflict between NATO and Russia as a battle between authoritarian and democratic forces. China is in the latter category, for otherwise it would not be getting courted by the US President and his European counterparts. The good news for the EU is that Boris Johnson has returned to the fold in all but name. The bad news is that the sanctions screw that is being steadily tightened against Russia is making it more likely that Putin will not stop at Ukraine but continue until the Russians reach a point where kinetic conflict erupts between NATO and Russia. This would not be over Moldova or Georgia, which will meet the fate of Ukraine, but because of the Baltic states and more and more likely, Poland. From then the use of tactical nuclear weapons and the subsequent chain reaction of escalation would not be an impossible step. It is a testimony to his disconnect from geopolitical reality that Volodymyr Zelenskyy is ­importuning NATO members to carry out actions that would lead to the catastrophe he is anxious to prevent. Rather than bringing him into reality by accepting the situation and cutting a deal with Moscow, it is inexplicable why Biden, Johnson, and Stoltenberg are encouraging him in his disastrous fantasy of defeating Russia. Both Napoleon and Hitler had similar fantasies. President Zelenskyy.