Vatnik Soup: Some History of Ukraine

Mar 26, 2025 | RUSSIA!, SECOND REICH

Russia and the Trump administration are lying about the war in Ukraine. Their latest recycled claim is that ‘NATO provoked the war in Ukraine.’

This silly narrative is usually spread by Russians, but recently they were joined in by the richest man in the world, @elonmusk

This claim stems from a statement made by American Secretary of State James A. Baker to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1990, suggesting that NATO would move “not one inch eastward” if Russia accepted Germany’s unification.

However, this assurance was only about Germany and was not formalized in any binding agreement. Even Gorbachev himself said that this promise was never made.

Unlike the Budapest Memorandum from 1994, where Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons in exchange for security guarantees from the US, the UK, and Russia – guarantees that Russia blatantly violated by invading Ukraine in 2014.

NATO isn’t some evil empire forcing countries to join. Nations like Poland, Estonia, and Lithuania chose to join NATO – because history showed them what happens when they don’t have protection.

Russia wasn’t ‘provoked’ – these countries were just protecting themselves from Russian imperialism.

And if anything, Russia’s the one driving countries toward NATO. Their invasion in Ukraine made Finland and Sweden ditch neutrality and run straight to NATO.

Again, who invaded who? And which NATO countries have been invaded by Russia?

Today, top US officials are spreading this exact lie about NATO provoking Russia. Elon Musk is now completely fixated on the US leaving NATO, pushing old falsehoods that were debunked long ago. He’ll probably post around 300 times about this topic in the next week or so. And these same lies may soon be echoed by President Trump.

And speaking of verbal statements, here’s Putin himself, in a 2008 interview, saying that Crimea is Ukraine.