Since February 2022, Americans have been fed a fairy tale about the war in Ukraine a story so uniform across NPR, PBS, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Time, CNN, MSNBC, and even Democracy Now that it reveals less about Russian aggression and more about the collapse of critical journalism in the United States.
In that fairy tale, Russia unprovoked invaded an innocent neighbor. Ukraine, noble and outgunned, somehow fought the Russian behemoth to a heroic standstill while inflicting catastrophic losses on Moscow. The United States, we are told, has been the grown-up in the room always seeking peace while a stubborn, irrational Vladimir Putin refuses compromise.
None of that matches what has actually happened.
I don't come to that conclusion lightly. Since the start of Russias Special Military Operation, I've written more than a dozen articles on Ukraine most of them for OpEdNews. (See below) Across those pieces, Ive argued five things:
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By long-established U.S. standards and precedents, Russia had ample cause to defend itself against NATO's relentless march to its borders.
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The war has never been simply Russia vs. Ukraine; it has always been a proxy war between Moscow and the United States/NATO.
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Despite the vast imbalance in money, weaponry, and propaganda, Russia has prevailed militarily and strategically at nearly every turn.
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Moscow has largely refrained from U.S.-style Shock and Awe tactics that deliberately terrorize civilian populations.
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Whether one admires him or not, Putin has been the most restrained and predictable major leader in this war.
Those are strong claims. So let me explain how I arrived at them and what they mean now that Washington and NATO are quietly negotiating terms of capitulation they once declared impossible.
Rejecting Scripted Narratives
From day one, I made a conscious decision to eschew mainstream narratives about Ukraine. I've watched this movie too many times: Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria. In each case, official experts and prestige media gave us a clean story of good intentions and necessary wars until reality, corpses, and classified documents told another story.
Instead of relying on that machinery, I turned to analysts with actual experience and memory:
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Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs,
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Former intelligence and security professionals like Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter,
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Military strategists like Col. Douglas MacGregor,
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Independent geopolitical commentators like Alexander Mercouris, Alex Christoforou, Brian Berletic, Garland Nixon, Jimmy Dore, and Robert Barnes.
These aren't saints. They disagree with one another. But they share three qualities utterly missing from mainstream coverage:
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They know how wars actually work.
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They remember U.S. foreign-policy history.
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They are willing to analyze designated enemies rather than demonize them.
In particular, I've followed Alexander Mercouris' daily 90-minute briefings, where he methodically tracks changes along the 1,000-kilometer line of contact. Through that lens I watched:
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The slow, grinding fall of key Ukrainian strongholds,
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The complete failure of Ukraine's much-hyped 2023 summer offensive,
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The steady Russian advance westward in an attrition campaign the mainstream never honestly described.
On paper, NATO's side had nearly everything: money, high-tech weapons, satellites, intelligence, media power. Russia had geography, industrial capacity, and patience. Patience won.
NATO Expansion: The Forgotten Red Line
To understand why this war happened and why Russia was prepared to fight it, we have to step back.
For decades, Russian leaders of every stripe including those favored in the West warned that NATO expansion to Russia's border was a red line. This wasn't just Putin's obsession. It was echoed by George Kennan (the architect of containment), Henry Kissinger, Jack Matlock (Reagans ambassador to Moscow), and even CIA Director William Burns.
From the 1990s onward, successive U.S. administrations broke informal and formal assurances, pushed NATO eastward, armed and trained Ukrainian forces, and treated Russia as a defeated colony rather than a major power. The 2014 Maidan coup, the subsequent civil war in the Donbass, and eight years of Ukrainian shelling of Russian-speaking regions only deepened the crisis.
By the time Moscow launched its operation in 2022, Russia believed rightly or wrongly that it was fighting not for land, but for survival as a sovereign state.
That doesn't make everything Russia has done morally pure. But it does make the word unprovoked dishonest.
De-Nazification: Propaganda or Inconvenient Fact?
One of Moscow's stated objectives was de-Nazification. Western commentators mocked this as propaganda. Yet the facts are not really in dispute.
Units like the Azov Battalion, Aidar Battalion, and Right Sector have been documented by Western journalists, Israeli media, and human rights organizations as harboring neo-Nazi symbols, ideologies, and networks. After 2014, these formations were incorporated into Ukraines security structures and presented to the West as heroic defenders.
To acknowledge this is not to demonize all Ukrainians or deny their suffering. It is simply to say that Russias reference to Nazi influence was not conjured from thin air. It was rooted in something Western media chose to minimize or forget.
What Surrender Looks Like in a Suit
Today, the battlefield reality is grim for Kyiv:
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Ukraine's pre-war army has been largely destroyed.
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Manpower is so depleted that men well into their 50s and 60s are being conscripted.
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Western arsenals are drained.
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Russia controls key logistical hubs and enjoys overwhelming artillery superiority.
In such a context, the word stalemate is a euphemism. Ukraine is no longer capable of decisive offensive action. NATO has no credible conventional path to defeating Russia in Ukraine.
So we hear whispers of peace plans, ceasefires, and negotiations often framed as Donald Trump inexplicably giving in to Putin, as though Putin has something on him. That story continues the tired Russiagate myth and saves face for a Washington establishment that promised victory.
The truth is less dramatic and more humiliating: Washington and NATO lost their proxy war. The winner, as always, sets conditions.
And here is the irony: those outrageous conditions widely described as Putins maximalist demands are essentially the same objectives Russia articulated before the war began:
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Ukrainian neutrality no NATO membership.
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Demilitarization no NATO missile systems on Russias border.
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De-Nazification removal of Nazi-linked formations from state structures.
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Recognition of Crimea and breakaway regions as Russian.
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Security guarantees that NATO expansion stops.
In April 2022, at Istanbul, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators initialed a draft agreement along those lines. The war could have ended then. Instead, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson rushed to Kyiv and reportedly urged Zelensky to abandon the deal and fight on with Western backing.
Tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives were sacrificed on the altar of that decision.
Now, after two and a half years of bloodshed, we are back to those same basic terms except Russia controls more territory, Ukraine is weaker, and NATO is more divided.
This is what surrender looks like in a suit: euphemisms in press conferences, face-saving language in communiques, and the quiet acceptance of terms from a side the West swore it would defeat.
The fairy tale said Russia was isolated, collapsing, and on the brink of defeat.
Reality shows something else: NATO marched to Russias border, lit a proxy war in Ukraine, and lost.
The Pattern: Who's Been Right All Along?
Ukraine is not a one-off mistake. It is part of a pattern.
Time and again, the voices that proved right were not the Pentagon spokespersons or network generals. They were the dissidents, the whistleblowers, the realists, the people willing to challenge the mythology of American innocence:
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On Vietnam, they were right.
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On Iraqs non-existent WMD, they were right.
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On Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, they were right.
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On Libya and Syria, they were right.
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On Gaza today, they are right again.
And on Ukraine, the alternative analysts I've followed Sachs, Mearsheimer, McGovern, Ritter, MacGregor, Mercouris, and others have been consistently correct where mainstream pundits have repeatedly failed.
That doesn't make anyone infallible. It does mean that those who analyze designated enemies instead of demonizing them gain access to reality sooner.
Conclusion: A Chance for Humility
The war in Ukraine is ending as sober observers said it would: not with a triumphant Ukrainian flag over Crimea, but with Washington and Brussels quietly negotiating limits they once called unimaginable.
Ukraine did not stand up to Russia and win.
NATO did not stop Putin.
The West lost its proxy war and is searching for a way to disguise capitulation as diplomacy.
The deeper question now is not whether Russia learns humility, but whether we do. Will we continue to wage unwinable wars, believe narratives nobody questions, and call that defending democracy? Or will we finally listen to the voices who have been right all along not because they are smarter, but because they refused to confuse propaganda with truth?
For my part, I know where I stand. I stand with those who insist on seeing clearly, even especially when it's our own leaders and our own narratives that must be questioned.
My Previous OpEdNews Articles on Ukraine (Chronological Order)
(2/26/22)
20 Reasons Why The United States and Europe Bear Ultimate Responsibility for the Ukrainian Crisis(3/4/22)
12 Potentially Good Outcomes of the Ukraine War
(3/7/22)
20 Principles for Making Sense of the Ukraine War
(3/26/22)
In Ukraine the Gangsters of Capitalism Have Gone to the Matrasses Again
(5/8/22)
O.K. Im A Putin Apologist: Heres Why
(7/15/22)
Russia in Ukraine: Champion and Proxy for the Worlds Oppressed
(2/26/23)
About Ukraine Even Marianne Williamson Has Sold Out to Imperialism and Conventional Thinking
(4/23/23)
Are We Meeting the Risen Christ in Russia and China?
(8/24/23)
Putins a Killer Whos Guilty Until (Impossibly) Proven Innocent
(3/26/24)
Even for Democracy Now, Putins to Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre
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