Photo Sabrina © DiGeorge Aaron Maté is an independent journalist and co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots. He has reported and produced for outlets including The Grayzone, The Nation, The Real News, Al Jazeera, and Real Clear Investigations. He won a 2019 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media and was previously a longtime producer at Democracy Now!

Casting Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a rogue state seeking to restore the Soviet empire, Western governments have united behind a proxy war in Ukraine that has claimed well over a million lives on both sides and caused global turmoil.

NATO states led by Washington have acted as co-belligerents against Russia in all areas short of deploying ground troops. They have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in advanced weaponry, trained its army, plotted battle strategy, shared intelligence, and directly assisted strikes on enemy targets, including inside Russian territory.

US-led sanctions have severed Russia from the Western financial system, spiking global food and energy prices while exacerbating a geopolitical divide unseen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the US role in Ukraine has increased, so has the risk of a direct US conflict with Russia, the world’s other top nuclear power. Former president Joe Biden privately described the war as the world’s most dangerous moment since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

In another echo of the Cold War, the conflict in Ukraine has led to increased government censorship in all states involved. In both Russia and Ukraine, dissenting journalists and anti-war activists have faced harsh persecution. Meanwhile governments, social media platforms, and broadcasters within the NATO bloc teamed up to ban Russian state-associated media, denying Western publics access to a Russian perspective.

Voices across the political spectrum that question the proxy war and advocate diplomatic alternatives are routinely delegitimized as Kremlin apologists, purveyors of “Russian disinformation,” or naïve advocates of appeasement. This jingoistic climate has impeded public debate on a mammoth war effort funded by our taxes. With the media and political establishments in lockstep behind a US-led military effort against Russia in Ukraine, ordinary citizens have been deprived of critical information about how the war came to be and whether reasonable, peaceful compromises could have been explored.

This book challenges the narratives that have sustained years of NATO proxy warfare in Ukraine. It is not an attempt to justify Russia’s invasion, which I view as an illegal act of aggression. Nor do I dismiss the millions of Ukrainians who rallied behind their government in opposition to the Russian attack, and the global sympathies that Ukraine’s resistance naturally attracted.

I do, however, reject the view that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked. The available record, including multiple overlooked admissions by top US and NATO officials, reveals a story that has been systematically hidden from the public. Contrary to their professed support for Ukrainian sovereignty, agency, and democracy, Washington and other Western powers have in fact meddled in Ukraine for decades, with the actual aim of weakening and destabilizing Russia.

While claiming to see Ukraine as an ally, this US-led campaign has capitalized upon the country’s internal divisions and even supported regime change. NATO’s exploitation of Kyiv has led it to undermine diplomatic compromises that could have prevented the Russian invasion and its catastrophic consequences, first and foremost for the Ukrainian people.

In their determination to treat the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder against Russia, Washington mandarins subverted not only their proxy’s democracy, but their own as well. To sustain their longstanding bid to contain Russia, this book demonstrates that national security state bureaucrats have defied and at times directly undermined two elected presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In the process, the Russia–Ukraine issue has played an outsize role in US politics and deepened its polarization.

During Obama’s years in office, key officials ignored his calls for a “reset” with Moscow and waged an underhanded new Cold War in his name. When Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, defied Washington convention even more forcefully by openly championing warm relations with Moscow, he faced an unprecedented sabotage effort from the same corners of power.

In the 2016 election, members of the Hillary Clinton campaign and allied US national security state officials framed Trump and his associates as conspirators with Moscow and beneficiaries of a purported Kremlin interference operation to help him win office. The resulting scandal, known as “Russiagate,” consumed Trump’s first presidential term and ultimately drove an escalation of US–Russia conflict.

Although the US and its partners did not send their own forces to fight in Ukraine, they fueled and incited the conflict in ways that paralleled previous pro-war deceptions, from Vietnam to Iraq. Those conflicts underscored the need for careful, critical scrutiny of all government pronouncements intended to justify costly foreign wars. This book follows in that tradition. It breaks through the propaganda firewall surrounding the Russia–Ukraine war to reveal a story hidden from so many, at great cost to us all.

Photo Sabrina © DiGeorge Aaron Maté is an independent journalist and co-host of the podcast Useful Idiots. He has reported and produced for outlets including The Grayzone, The Nation, The Real News, Al Jazeera, and Real Clear Investigations. He won a 2019 Izzy Award for outstanding achievement in independent media and was previously a longtime producer at Democracy Now!

Casting Vladimir Putin’s Russia as a rogue state seeking to restore the Soviet empire, Western governments have united behind a proxy war in Ukraine that has claimed well over a million lives on both sides and caused global turmoil.

NATO states led by Washington have acted as co-belligerents against Russia in all areas short of deploying ground troops. They have armed Ukraine with tens of billions of dollars in advanced weaponry, trained its army, plotted battle strategy, shared intelligence, and directly assisted strikes on enemy targets, including inside Russian territory.

US-led sanctions have severed Russia from the Western financial system, spiking global food and energy prices while exacerbating a geopolitical divide unseen since the collapse of the Soviet Union. As the US role in Ukraine has increased, so has the risk of a direct US conflict with Russia, the world’s other top nuclear power. Former president Joe Biden privately described the war as the world’s most dangerous moment since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

In another echo of the Cold War, the conflict in Ukraine has led to increased government censorship in all states involved. In both Russia and Ukraine, dissenting journalists and anti-war activists have faced harsh persecution. Meanwhile governments, social media platforms, and broadcasters within the NATO bloc teamed up to ban Russian state-associated media, denying Western publics access to a Russian perspective.

Voices across the political spectrum that question the proxy war and advocate diplomatic alternatives are routinely delegitimized as Kremlin apologists, purveyors of “Russian disinformation,” or naïve advocates of appeasement. This jingoistic climate has impeded public debate on a mammoth war effort funded by our taxes. With the media and political establishments in lockstep behind a US-led military effort against Russia in Ukraine, ordinary citizens have been deprived of critical information about how the war came to be and whether reasonable, peaceful compromises could have been explored.

This book challenges the narratives that have sustained years of NATO proxy warfare in Ukraine. It is not an attempt to justify Russia’s invasion, which I view as an illegal act of aggression. Nor do I dismiss the millions of Ukrainians who rallied behind their government in opposition to the Russian attack, and the global sympathies that Ukraine’s resistance naturally attracted.

I do, however, reject the view that Russia’s invasion was unprovoked. The available record, including multiple overlooked admissions by top US and NATO officials, reveals a story that has been systematically hidden from the public. Contrary to their professed support for Ukrainian sovereignty, agency, and democracy, Washington and other Western powers have in fact meddled in Ukraine for decades, with the actual aim of weakening and destabilizing Russia.

While claiming to see Ukraine as an ally, this US-led campaign has capitalized upon the country’s internal divisions and even supported regime change. NATO’s exploitation of Kyiv has led it to undermine diplomatic compromises that could have prevented the Russian invasion and its catastrophic consequences, first and foremost for the Ukrainian people.

In their determination to treat the Ukrainian people as cannon fodder against Russia, Washington mandarins subverted not only their proxy’s democracy, but their own as well. To sustain their longstanding bid to contain Russia, this book demonstrates that national security state bureaucrats have defied and at times directly undermined two elected presidents: Barack Obama and Donald Trump. In the process, the Russia–Ukraine issue has played an outsize role in US politics and deepened its polarization.

During Obama’s years in office, key officials ignored his calls for a “reset” with Moscow and waged an underhanded new Cold War in his name. When Obama’s successor, Donald Trump, defied Washington convention even more forcefully by openly championing warm relations with Moscow, he faced an unprecedented sabotage effort from the same corners of power.

In the 2016 election, members of the Hillary Clinton campaign and allied US national security state officials framed Trump and his associates as conspirators with Moscow and beneficiaries of a purported Kremlin interference operation to help him win office. The resulting scandal, known as “Russiagate,” consumed Trump’s first presidential term and ultimately drove an escalation of US–Russia conflict.

Although the US and its partners did not send their own forces to fight in Ukraine, they fueled and incited the conflict in ways that paralleled previous pro-war deceptions, from Vietnam to Iraq. Those conflicts underscored the need for careful, critical scrutiny of all government pronouncements intended to justify costly foreign wars. This book follows in that tradition. It breaks through the propaganda firewall surrounding the Russia–Ukraine war to reveal a story hidden from so many, at great cost to us all.