The United States does not consider Russia is invading Ukraine by sending troops to the separatist republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, since it didn’t adopt harsher sanctions. This false narrative is promoted by Sorin Roșca Stănescu, a journalist known for being involved in criminal investigations, and whose articles regularly reference narratives similar to those publicized by Russian propaganda.
NEWS: “It’s over. Which was only to be expected. Donetsk and Luhansk have been recognized by the Parliament of the Russian Federation as independent states […] Are we dealing with new states, appearing on the world map, or is this a transition towards reuniting with “Mother Russia”? […] It is extremely interesting to note the first reaction of the United States and NATO countries. A White House high-ranking official has left the entire planet open-mouthed, when he said loud and clear that these capital decisions regarding Donetsk and Luhansk do not represent an act of aggression from Moscow, nor does the deployment of troops that have been sent to the region to keep the peace, since the separation of the two provinces has been a long time coming, and was carried out by popular referendum, not in the wake of a Russian invasion. Moreover, the recent decisions taken by MPs from Donetsk and Luhansk, which have been certified by the Parliament of the Russian Federation as such, are not considered acts of aggression, but democratic processes. Therefore, the conditions for NATO states to act, collectively or unilaterally, have not been met, so that the latest development cannot be considered acts of aggression against Ukraine. To put it briefly, NATO cannot therefore adopt punitive measures announced for such a scenario. At the same time, one by one, NATO states are announcing they will not be recognizing the statehood of the two regions. Let’s see if there are any exceptions. Will this be a reverse outcome compared to what happened in Kosovo, a province turned state at the end of the war, when Yugoslavia collapsed? For a long time now, Kosovo, a country created under pressure from America and the West, was not recognized by the then members of the European Unions or countries that joined the EU afterwards, such as the case of Romania. It’s interesting to see what happens to Donetsk and Luhansk, from this perspective […] If no aggression was reported, then there won’t be a war. If there’s no war, then the projected sanctions do not apply. If there’s no war and no sanctions apply, then all the warnings raised by NATO officials and heads of member states turn out to be mere acts of propaganda”, Sorin Roșca Stănescu writes on corectnews.com.
NARRATIVES: Russia did not invade Ukraine, since Donetsk and Luhansk were already de facto part of the Russian Federation. 2. The United States do not believe sending Russian troops to Donbas represents an invasion. 3. The West supported the creation of Kosovo, so Russia has every right to support the creation of new states in Eastern Ukraine.
BACKGROUND: On the evening of February 21, the Kremlin leader, Vladimir Putin, officially recognized the separatist republics in Eastern Ukraine (Luhansk and Donetsk), which Russian rebels have controlled, with the help of the Russian military, ever since 2014, after the Euromaidan protests in Kiev. Back then, Ukrainians overthrew Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian regime, and the country reoriented itself towards the European Union as a model of economic development.
In recent months, Moscow has unsuccessfully tried to negotiate with the West new spheres of influence and to block a hypothetical accession of Ukraine to NATO, issuing threats to its security. In response, the West told the Kremlin that each state has a sovereign right to decide whether it wants to join the North-Atlantic Treaty Alliance or not. The West did not comply with the demands of Moscow authorities, who also called on NATO to withdraw all its troops from member states on its eastern flank that joined the Alliance after 1997.
Against this backdrop, which was very much predictable, the Kremlin launched a series of diversions on the borderlines, with the help of pro-Russian rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk, and dispatched “peacekeeping troops” to these regions in Eastern Ukraine. Western officials have every reason to believe Putin is willing to go all the way, to cross the borderline clearly specified in the Minsk protocols, in order to invade larger parts of Ukraine, especially as the Kremlin leader said he recognized the separatist republics, including the territories they claim, which are currently under the de jure control of the government in Kiev.
PURPOSE: To mislead public opinion, claiming the USA (and, by extension, the West as a whole), agrees to Russia’s military maneuvers in Donetsk and Luhansk and will not undertake any action or apply sanctions against Moscow.
WHY THE NARRATIVES ARE FALSE: Sorin Roșca Stănescu, who is otherwise a regular and outspoken advocate of typical Russian propaganda narratives in his articles, which Veridica.ro has repeatedly proved in the past, is using a series of fallacies to reinterpret the White House’s reactions to Russia’s actions in Donetsk and Luhansk. Sorin Roșca Stănescu juggles with the terminology used by American officials in order to create the false impression that USA has resigned itself to Russia’s maneuvers in Eastern Ukraine.
First of all, Sorin Roșca Stănescu claims an American official “said loud and clear” that “these capital decisions regarding Donetsk and Luhansk do not represent an act of aggression from Moscow”. There has never been any official statement in this respect. On the contrary, as France 24 writes, “a high ranking American official refused to specify whether Putin’s decision to order Russia’s armed forces to “keep the peace” on the ground [in Donetsk and Luhansk] is considered an invasion, which would thus trigger Western sanctions of a much larger scope and severity against Moscow.” It is, therefore, a completely different interpretation than the one presented by Roșca Stănescu.
“We will be assessing Russian actions and responding accordingly”, the official told the reporters, underlining that Russia has had forces in the Donbas region for the past eight years. “We’ll continue to pursue diplomacy until the tanks roll”, the US official said, quoted by the aforementioned source.
In other words, the USA claims the Russian presence in Donetsk and Luhansk was already known to the West, and that it is waiting to see if Russian or separatist forces will next cross the border, before deciding whether it applies harsher sanctions or taking other decisions regarding this possible outcome.
On the other hand, for many years now, Russia has been spreading the already “classical” theme of the “Kosovo precedent”, whereby Moscow has been trying to claim that, if the West was allowed to intervene to create Kosovo in the Balkans following a referendum, then Russia too is entitled to undertake similar actions in areas with a majority Russian population, following large-scale actions of providing Russian passports to the local population.
Russia is trying to reinforce the legitimacy of an invasion of Donetsk and Luhansk (and of Crimea, in the past), just as NATO intervened in Serbia during the war in the Balkans at the end of the 1990s. Nevertheless, NATO’s military intervention was justified by the stopping of war crimes committed by the Serbian army and paramilitary forces. Compared to the present-day developments, Ukraine hasn’t even crossed the borderline in the East separating it from the pro-Russian rebel-controlled regions.
Moreover, Russia has fabricated a gross piece of fake news, claiming Ukrainian armored vehicles and forces allegedly crossed the borderline. The Ukrainian diplomacy has dismissed the incident as false.
GRAIN OF TRUTH: The USA did not apply harsh sanctions in the early stages of Russia’s maneuvers in Ukraine.
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