Hypocrisy and Double Standards: The Selective Justice of Western Leaders

Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

Image: © Bob Moran / Bob Moran Art

"The white man, him speak with forked tongue." – Anon.

March 1, 2025: As [Minister of Foreign Affairs] Espen Barth Eide said on nrk.no: "The West is criticized for having double standards in the war in Ukraine and the Middle East. We must take active steps to avoid this perception." But there are two standards out there—one for Russia and one for the US.

A murder and an attempted murder

Sergei Skripal—In March 2018, an attempt was made on Sergei Skripal's life in England. The Russians were suspected but did not admit to the crime. The condemnation from the West was harsh and massive, the language was coarse, and as many as 153 Russian diplomats were sent home, one of them from Norway. In addition, various sanctions were introduced.

Jamal Khashoggi—In October 2018, Jamal Khashoggi was allegedly brutally executed and dismembered in Saudi Arabia's consulate in Istanbul. The murder was carried out by a commando group of five men from Saudi Arabia, probably ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman. There was no reaction from Western countries, no diplomats were expelled, no sanctions were imposed and arms exports from the USA continued as usual. The language used here was mild or completely absent.

Conclusion: An anti-Russia campaign—There is little doubt that the Skripal incident served to discredit Russia to such an extent that there is reason to believe it was designed and carried out by MI6 and the CIA for this purpose. Below we will take a closer look at the background to the war in Ukraine, and show that there is "a rule for them" and "a rule for us". The duality is not due to incompetent politicians. It is because an "Anti-Russia campaign" is still going on, many years after the end of the Cold War. The US and the UK are leading the campaign, and Norwegian politicians are participating uncritically.

The background to the war in Ukraine

An Existential threat—When the Soviet Union sent ships to Cuba with missiles to be deployed there, the USA protested vehemently. "It will pose an existential threat," they said. "Missiles will be able to reach central parts of the United States in a short time." "The missiles will be able to carry nuclear warheads."

For the same reason, Russia sees NATO's eastward expansion as an existential threat. The West accepted the US concern but did not recognize Russia's concern.

If the "red line" is crossed, there will be war—Tensions were running high between Soviet Premier Níkíta Sergeyevich Khrushchev and US President John F. Kennedy. And minutes away from a major war, the ships turned around, the crisis was averted by adults talking together and finding diplomatic solutions that averted war.

In Ukraine, no adults were talking to each other. The US pushed through its "eastward expansion of NATO" as if it was Ukraine's sole right to decide who it wanted to be allied with, while it was NOT Cuba's right to do so. And war ensued.

A verbal promise—At the dissolution of the Soviet Union, several heads of state were crystal clear about what became Russia: NATO would not expand eastward, not one inch. Secretary of State James Baker was one of them. Victoria Nuland stated that this quote was wrong, in this video she is "caught" in her lie. The link should be set to the right place 20 seconds into the video.

Some 30 minutes, telegrams, notes, and correspondence confirm that NATO was not to expand eastwards and that this was a prerequisite for the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The documents have been released and are available at George Washington University.

Betrayal—If the Russians had reneged on their promise not to deploy missiles in Cuba at the time, the West would have seen it as monstrous. The West is fine with the US and NATO reneging on their promise. Jens Stoltenberg, the greatest war promoter the world has seen in recent times, said that because there was no written promise as part of a written agreement, he and NATO were free to walk away from what was said. He does not tell us that the Soviet Union's promise to the United States and the United States' promise to the Soviet Union during the Cuban Missile Crisis were also oral. A verbal promise is just as legally binding as a written promise. But not for Jens Stoltenberg and NATO.

Breaking a promise is a betrayal, no more and no less. Accepting that the USA should be able to demand the absence of nuclear weapons near its border, without accepting that Russia can demand the same, is idiotic.

The US plan from 1993: Expand NATO eastward—As early as around 1993, Zbigniew Brzezinski expressed his strategy to expand NATO eastwards. Soon, only Georgia and Ukraine were left before Russia was "surrounded" by NATO and NATO could deploy missiles along Russia's entire border with the West, missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

These people were particularly responsible for the expansion:

Against NATO expansion, they warned that expansion could provoke Russia and create instability:

Special mention must be made of William Burns

He was US ambassador to Russia (2005-2008) and later CIA director. In a classified diplomatic correspondence from 2008, leaked by WikiLeaks, Burns reported that Russia's leadership repeatedly warned that NATO expansion into Ukraine and Georgia would be seen as a serious provocation. He wrote that Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov had said "Nyet means nyet" when it came to NATO membership for Ukraine.

Burns' telegram emphasized that Russian leaders, including Vladimir Putin, viewed NATO expansion as a red line that could lead to conflict. This became particularly relevant after the NATO summit in Bucharest in 2008, where NATO declared that Ukraine and Georgia would "one day" become members. Russia reacted strongly, and shortly afterward the Russia-Georgia war broke out in August 2008.

The road to regime change

Huge demonstrations in Kyiv led up to the regime change. What many people don't know is that Victoria Nuland boasted that the US had invested 5 billion dollars in regime change in Ukraine. The amount is equivalent to what the US has spent on regime change in Georgia these days.

Crucial to the coup happened on the final day when people were shot by snipers deployed on top of a building. Not only were protesters gunned down and killed, but police officers tasked with crowd control were also gunned down and killed. Each of the two groups believed the other was responsible for the shooting, and it all escalated violently. Only later did it become clear that there was a third group using murder as "crisis initiation" to achieve the goal of regime change. It has been said that it could be CIA agents from Georgia.

A week before the coup, Victoria Nuland and the American ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt discussed who should be in the future coup government and who should not. The Russians intercepted the phone call and published it on the internet. The call is famous for Nuland's quote "Fuck the EU". The link below will direct you to this conversation 10 minutes into this video.

The actors behind the coup

Four people, in particular, are mentioned as the brains behind the coup in Kyiv in 2014: Joe Biden, then Vice President under Barack Obama, Victoria Nuland, Jeff Sullivan, and Anthony Blinken, then Deputy Secretary of State. Remarkably, the same foursome was at the helm of Joe Biden's administration from 2020 to 2024. Thus, they have been in control of both a regime change and the US proxy war against Russia.

Before the coup, they allied themselves with the Azov Brigade based on old Nazi ideals, all of whom had in common that they hated Russians as much as the four-leaf clover hated them. The Russian speakers in Donetsk and Luhansk were already worried BEFORE the coup, and after the coup, they began to fear for their lives. An incident in Odessa where a couple of hundred ethnic Russians were locked up in a building that was set on fire, and around fifty Russians were killed, helped to fuel the fear. A large group of Nazi-inspired young men celebrated the events by marching in the streets adorned with Nazi symbols.

Before the coup, the people of Ukraine were aware that they were a divided people, and this was one of the reasons why they wanted neutrality instead of an alliance with NATO. After the coup, it became clear that the new coup regime did NOT represent all the people, only the ethnic Ukrainians. The ethnic Russians in the east did not recognize the regime and mobilized to fight against it.

Russia annexed Crimea

The first thing that happened after the 2014 coup was that Putin annexed Crimea, as he said he would do in 2008 if NATO tried to expand into Ukraine before the Ukrainians could do anything. This happened without a single shot being fired, and a referendum sometime later showed that an overwhelming majority of the people wanted Crimea to be part of Russia. Hendrik Weber has written the book "Who Has the Right to Crimea" (2019), which puts this event into a broad perspective.

As an aside, it should be mentioned that when Níkíta Sergeyevich Khrushchev "gave away" Crimea to Ukraine in a drunken rage in 1954, it was more of a gesture to a colleague than a relinquishment of land, and according to Jeffrey Sachs, there is hardly a politician in the world who has regarded Crimea as anything other than Russian since 1783.

The peace agreements

Minsk I—was signed by Ukraine, Russia, the OSCE, and the separatists in September 2014. The goal was a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons, and decentralization of power in Ukraine. The ceasefire quickly broke down.

Minsk II—came in February 2015, and was signed after renewed fighting, including the Battle of Debaltseve. It included a new ceasefire, withdrawal of weapons, Ukrainian control of the border, amnesty for rebels, and more autonomy for Donbas. The agreement was never fully implemented and the conflict continued with low-intensity warfare. The agreements collapsed completely when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022.

Time for rearmament

Minsk II was used by Western countries as a strategic tool to give Ukraine time to strengthen its defense capabilities. Several former Western leaders, such as Angela Merkel and François Hollande, have subsequently suggested that they saw the agreement as a way of buying time. At the same time, Russia claims that this was proof that the West never wanted a peaceful solution, but rather wanted to arm Ukraine for a future confrontation.

Between 2014 and 2022, Ukraine was armed to NATO standards, with one of the largest armies in Europe after Turkey. At the same time, Ukraine increased artillery fire on Dombass and Luhansk to such an extent (confirmed by the OSCE) that Putin was forced to intervene. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine began on February 24, 2022.

The Istanbul negotiations

[The negotiations] took place in Istanbul in March 2022 as a possible "basis for peace" between Russia and Ukraine. The parties came close to an agreement, but Ukraine withdrew under pressure from the West, after Boris Johnson visited Kyiv on orders from the US and told Zelenskyi that he had to withdraw from the agreement, because they would win this war together and Zelenskyi would get everything he needed for victory. The Istanbul Agreement contained, among other things:

If the agreement had been signed a month after the war started, Ukraine would have been in a much better position than it is today, and half a million lives would have been saved. Putin is probably prepared to use this agreement as a model for a new agreement with Ukraine. The problem has always been that neither the Biden administration nor Zelenskyj will talk to Russia.

A proxy war

Boris Johnson is quite clear that the war in Ukraine is a proxy war that the US and NATO are waging against Russia in Ukraine. The US has said that the beauty of proxy war is that it's not the Americans who are being killed. It's Ukraine that bleeds.

Speaking of full-scale war

Politicians and the media like to say that Russia's war against Ukraine was an unprovoked full-scale war of aggression. The word "full-scale war" is slavishly repeated, as in psyop instructions, every time the war is mentioned. The US war against Iraq in 2003 was also an unprovoked full-scale war of aggression, but strangely enough, no one uses these words about the US, and no one has initiated sanctions against the US after this very serious criminal act.

While the word "unprovoked" covers the US war against Iraq, Russia's war against Ukraine was provoked by the US, and Russia was "played" into this war exactly as the US had planned. The aim of the war was clearly stated: to weaken Russia, topple the regime, and distribute the benefits between the EU, UK, and USA. The US had probably singled out Alexei Anatolyevich Navalny as the next leader of Russia. He died or was killed on February 16, 2024, which the US did not like very much.

New negotiations with Trump

Since the new administration came into place on January 20, 2025, things have happened dramatically and quickly. Russia and the US have begun to talk, and it looks like a peace treaty and an agreement between the US and Ukraine could be signed that will secure Ukraine's future revenues. It's interesting to note that the US is negotiating peace without Ukraine being present, which shows that the war has always been the US's proxy war, and the peace is the US's peace. Ukraine's role is to do what they are told.

What next?

Will the EU take over the war?—At the same time, it looks like Europe won't settle for peace in Ukraine. The head of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, has stated that even if the US withdraws, the EU will continue to send money, weapons, and equipment to Ukraine so that the war can be prolonged and perhaps escalate further. John Mearsheimer calls this a "morally bankrupt strategy:"

The Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, puts it this way:

You would think that politicians in their right mind would see it as their most important job to reduce the risk of war, to use diplomacy and negotiations, and to contribute to disarmament and peace. This is not the case, and the arms industry is celebrating while people have every reason to be concerned.

Is Georgia next?—There are indications that Western powers are heavily involved in developments in Georgia, and it is said that the US has also spent USD 5 billion on regime change here in recent years.

One thing is certain: Europe's hatred of Russia remains as strong as ever, and belligerence in the EU is as strong, or perhaps even stronger, now than before Trump. And the understanding of how Russia got into this mess is completely absent.

The only solution here is for the people of Europe to say STOP - enough is enough, this has to stop! Russia is ready. The EU is not. And the madness knows no bounds...

[Translation: DeepL (free version) + Grammarly (free version)]

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Image: © Bob Moran. AWIP: https://a-w-i-p.com/index.php/2025/03/05/hypocrisy-and-double-standards-the