Ray McGovern – About Things That Matter

What Yet Another U.S. Surrender Looks Like — This Time in Ukraine

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 Russia’s “Special Military Operation,” I’ve written more than a dozen articles on Ukraine — most of them here and for OpEdNews. (See below.) Across those pieces, I’ve argued five things:

By long-established U.S. standards and precedents, Russia had ample cause to defend itself against NATO’s relentless march to its borders.
The war has never been simply Russia vs. Ukraine; it has always been a proxy war between Moscow and the United States/NATO.
Despite the vast imbalance in money, weaponry, and propaganda, Russia has prevailed militarily and strategically at nearly every turn.
Moscow has largely refrained from U.S.-style “Shock and Awe” tactics that deliberately terrorize civilian populations.
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:

Realist scholars like John Mearsheimer and Jeffrey Sachs,
Former intelligence and security professionals like Ray McGovern and Scott Ritter,
Military strategists like Col. Douglas MacGregor,
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:

They know how wars actually work.
They remember U.S. foreign-policy history.
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:

The slow, grinding fall of key Ukrainian strongholds,
The complete failure of Ukraine’s much-hyped 2023 “summer offensive,”
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 (Reagan’s 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 Ukraine’s 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 Russia’s 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:

Ukraine’s pre-war army has been largely destroyed.
Manpower is so depleted that men well into their 50s and 60s are being conscripted.
Western arsenals are drained.
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 Putin’s “maximalist demands” are essentially the same objectives Russia articulated before the war began:

Ukrainian neutrality — no NATO membership.
Demilitarization — no NATO missile systems on Russia’s border.
De-Nazification — removal of Nazi-linked formations from state structures.
Recognition of Crimea and breakaway regions as Russian.
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 communiqués, 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 Russia’s 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:

On Vietnam, they were right.
On Iraq’s non-existent WMD, they were right.
On Afghanistan as an unwinnable quagmire, they were right.
On Libya and Syria, they were right.
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 them 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 unwinnable 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. I’m A Putin Apologist: Here’s Why”

(7/15/22)
“Russia in Ukraine: Champion and Proxy for the World’s 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)
“Putin’s a Killer Who’s Guilty Until (Impossibly) Proven Innocent”

(3/26/24)
“Even for ‘Democracy Now,’ Putin’s to Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre”

(12/5/24)
“Neocons Quake as Trump Threatens Peace in Ukraine”

Even for “Democracy Now” Putin’s To Blame for the Rock Concert Massacre

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7F-a6sABAw

Last week at least 137 Russians were killed at the Crocus rock concert outside of Moscow. Untold numbers were wounded, some remaining in critical condition. ISIS K has claimed responsibility.

However, do you know who’s truly responsible according to “Democracy Now” (DN)?

“Putin!”

That’s the takeaway the show’s audience was left with at the end of today’s program (3/25/24).

The presentation said little about the attack itself, much less about its impact on the Russian people. Nothing at all about how or by whom the attack was planned. Nothing but denials about Ukraine, and not even a mention of possible U.S. involvement.

Instead, it was all about “Putin” (never “President Putin” or “Mr. Putin,” only a disdainful “Putin.”)

Accordingly, DN centralized interviews with two anti-Kremlin guests whose evident intention it was to blame the whole tragedy on the Russian president. The guests were Nina Khrushcheva, Professor of international affairs at the New School, and Moscow correspondent of The New Yorker, Joshua Yaffa. According to both:

The attack represents a major failure of Putin and his security apparatus.
It was the result of longstanding Russian mistreatment of the country’s substantial Muslim population.
The United States had responsibly and generously warned the Kremlin about the impending attack.
However, its paranoid president chose to ignore the warnings referring to them as “blackmail.”
Moreover, with zero evidence, only the Russian president’s “paranoia” has made him accuse Ukraine of being involved.
Furthermore, It’s a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the perpetrators of the attack were attempting an escape to Ukraine, since their route was interrupted by Russian police 140 miles from that supposed destination.
After all, Putin’s interests are not in protecting the Russian people, but only his own authoritarian regime that has been responsible for the assassination of Alexi Navalny and has imprisoned more people than were incarcerated under previous Soviet leaders.
Shockingly, when they appeared in court, those arrested for the crime bore marks of torture.
And of course, Russia’s (already week’s long) attacks on Ukrainian infrastructure is an attempt to divert attention from Putin’s own failures.

I found all that extremely disappointing – especially since (to her credit) Amy Goodman’s coverage of world events does not usually follow the direction mandated by U.S. propaganda. However, in this case, it clearly did.

Instead of the usual denunciations of “Putin” it would have been much more informative to investigate the actual perpetrators of last week’s massacre. Ex-CIA personnel such as Ray McGovern and Larry Johnson could have helped with that. So could an interview with Scott Ritter (see below). Together or separately, they might have contextualized the horrific event by pointing out:

Victoria Nuland’s cryptic statement about “nasty surprises” in store for Russia in its near future.
The Russian president’s un-paranoid reasons for suspecting U.S. involvement in the attack given longstanding U.S connections with ISIS in Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere to wage war specifically against Russia.
A long history of U.S. sponsorship of terrorist attacks on Russia including its recent destruction of the Nord Stream Pipeline.
John Kirby’s strange premature disavowal of Ukrainian responsibility for the massacre before allowing any time whatsoever for investigation. (This was like the immediate indictment of “Putin” for the death of Alexi Navalny and for that of Yevgeny Prigozhin before their corpses were even cold.)
The attack’s convenient (for the west) and distracting effect in the wake of Mr. Putin’s recent landslide victory in a presidential election that (according to non-Russian sources) witnessed a voter turnout of 70% and a vote 87% for Mr. Putin.

In any case, here’s what Russian expert and former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter had to say about the Crocus tragedy:

The attack indeed represents a puzzling failure on the part of President Putin’s security apparatus. It has much to answer for.
However, that’s far from the point that needs highlighting – viz., the event’s perpetrators and possible connections to Russia’s avowed enemies, Ukraine, and the United States.
The attack’s attribution to Muslim terrorists also provides reason to doubt such jihadist identification since the killers untypically accepted money for their crime and did not choose “martyrdom” rather than surrender in its aftermath.
On March 7^th (well before the Russian elections) the United States did indeed issue a warning to U.S. residents in Russia about impending terrorist attacks and the advisability of staying away from large gatherings such as concerts.
The Russians “know everything” about the attack and the destination of its fleeing perpetrators.
Principal sources of official information are the captured cell phones of the fugitives.
Additionally, their phone conversations were intercepted in real time as they fled towards the Ukrainian border.
Both sources also contain incriminating information such as videos made while casing the crime site just before Russia’s presidential elections.
Such evidence suggests that the mass shooting was planned to disrupt that process, but that heavy security surrounding it forced postponement of the crime.
Phone information has also allowed authorities to track down the terrorist cell in Moscow that provided logistical support for their comrades.
All those arrested are currently divulging much more information that will soon come to light.

The lesson to be drawn from all this is one of extreme caution. Putin is not the issue here. Possible connection with Ukraine and the CIA is.

And regardless of what we might think of Scott Ritter’s analysis, it signals the complications of the questions at hand, the importance of not jumping to conclusions and of asking the right questions.

Propaganda, fake news, changing the subject, and gaslighting are everywhere. Even “Democracy Now,” even Amy Goodman are not immune from disseminating Russophobia. They too can be fooled by the Grand Wurlitzer of U.S. propaganda voiced by characters such as Khrushcheva, and Jaffa.

The lesson here (as always) is to focus on the heart of the matter, don’t allow misdirection of attention; retain constant suspicion of anything our government tells you. They’re all liars. Ex-CIA director Mike Pompeo put it best when he said as much.

Alexy Navalny Vs. Julian Assange, and Gonzalo Lira

Vladimir Putin has done it again. Just as he did with Yevgeny Prigozhin, he’s murdered another political adversary. This time it’s his “most prominent political opponent,” Alexy Navalny.

That’s the IMMEDIATE conclusion UNIVERSALLY drawn and promulgated by the political establishment and mainstream media in the collective west.

Such unanimity especially in the United States with its record of political assassinations and brutal political imprisonments raises suspicions that we might not be getting the full story.

That’s especially true when one contrasts western handwringing over Navalny’s fate with its indifference to the torture of imprisoned Australian citizen Julian Assange and to the State Department’s lack of concern about the behind bars death of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in Kiev.

So, before we join in premature conclusions, let’s look at the other side of Navalny’s death especially in the light of what we know about Assange and Lira.

Rush to Judgment

First, consider the immediate response to news that Navalny had died. Virtually EVERYONE from Genocide Joe Biden to Hillary Clinton and the Secretary General of Amnesty International claimed certainty that the man had been murdered “by Putin.”

This was even the general thrust of a “Democracy Now” interview with Russia expert Masha Gessen. The latter had authored an article in The New Yorker article entitled “The Death of Alexy Navalny Putin’s Most Formidable Political Opponent.” For Gessen there is “no doubt” Navalny was killed – again “by Putin.”

One wonders where such certainty can possibly come from simply on the report of Navalny’s death. After all, people die in U.S. prisons and migrant detention cells all the time. Such rush to judgment seems to fly in the face of the foundational legal principle that everyone is innocent until proven guilty. Nevertheless, before ANY examination of evidence, before any autopsy, before any independent investigation, the case is already closed.

The message to Americans: we too should have “no doubt.” Just as we were getting to know a more humanized Vladimir Putin (thanks to Tucker Carlson’s recent interview) the cruel autocrat has struck again. Whatever “official” autopsies might conclude, Putin is surely guilty and can never be proven innocent. (After all, who could ever believe Russian investigators?)

Moreover, Alexy Navalny is universally portrayed as a heroic advocate of democracy who has always opposed the “autocracy” of Vladimir Putin. He was a “freedom fighter” in the face of anti-democratic oppression.

True, Gessen admits that Navalny had previously been an ultra-nationalist often photographed with Nazi paraphernalia. And yes, he had also been anti-immigrant and Islamophobic. He was a guns-right advocate too who at one point called for the execution of Muslims and for the extermination of “cockroaches” like Russians living in Georgia.

But according to Gessen all of that was in the distant past. Since his arrest and apparently while behind bars, he had undergone a conversion. In fact, like many jailhouse converts, the imprisoned Navalny had become a student of religions. He had even transformed into an advocate of Muslims and their right to access to The Holy Koran while serving their time.

However, even if we grant the man’s conversion, the question remains why would Putin do such a thing? Navalny was already in prison serving a 19- year sentence. He was out of the public eye. He represented no political threat to the Russian leader who by all accounts enjoys high popularity with Russians and will easily win next month’s presidential elections.

In other words, Navalny’s “murder” could do nothing but make Putin look bad, expose him to criticism from his opponents, and hurt him at the ballot box. As ex-CIA officer, Ray McGovern puts it: Navalny “was of no consequence in terms of Putin’s reelection prospects. He had no real following there (i.e. in Russia) except among a certain group of folks that didn’t amount to much.”

The Other Navalny

But who really was Alexy Navalny? According to Scott Ritter, Navalny was a CIA agent “straight up.” He came to political awareness during the Boris Yeltsin years (1991-1999) before Putin’s reforms when Russia was extremely corrupt. Like so many young Russians of that era, he shared a strong admiration of the West that even bordered on rejection of his own Russian identity.

As such, Navalny was recognized by the CIA as a “future leader.” They sent him to the World Fellows Program at Yale University whose connections to the CIA (according to Ritter) are well known. There they groomed the man as a CIA-funded political opponent of Vladimir Putin.

In other words, Navalny was a player in a process that routinely funds so-called non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in Russia and elsewhere for purposes of bringing about regime change. Put still otherwise, the NGOs in question were fronts for U.S. and British intelligence agencies who after the advent of Vladimir Putin took on the task of bringing down the Russian president.

This made Navalny in the eyes of Russian law a traitor guilty of treason. As everywhere else, there are laws in Russia against such things.

Assange & Lira

Ray McGovern, an ex-CIA analyst, goes further still. He contrasts the hand wringing about the Navalny affair with the lack of such distress over Julian Assange, the Australian founder and editor of Wikileaks. McGovern’s concern is relevant because this week, the 20^th and 21^st of February, a final hearing will be held in London to determine Assange’s fate.

Julian Assange, of course, faces extradition to the United States to face a 175-year prison sentence for releasing to the public evidence of U.S. war crimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. For five years, he has been held without charge in a 6’X12’ cell in London’s infamous Belmarsh Prison with Great Britain’s worst rapists, murderers, and terrorists. Before that he spent seven years as an asylum seeker in London’s Ecuadorian embassy.

And this despite appeals for his release by the Australian Parliament itself, and despite the CIA’s breach of basic client-lawyer privilege by listening in and recording confidential conferences between Assange and his legal representatives – a fact that alone should disqualify any further legal processes against this Australian citizen.

Where’s the outcry, McGovern says about Assange’s imprisonment and torture? And doesn’t that prominent foreign journalist’s mistreatment deprive the U.S. of any moral authority to criticize, let alone issue demands about the Navalny case?

And then there’s the issue of the apparent murder of American citizen Gonzalo Lira in one of Kiev’s prisons. Lira was charged with suspicion of expressing subversive opinions about Ukraine’s war with Russia. According to Tucker Carlson, “the Biden administration clearly supported his imprisonment and torture. Several weeks ago, we spoke to his father, who predicted his son would be killed.”

I ask my readers: Have you even heard of Gonzalo Lira? If not, don’t worry, you’re in good company. Genocide Joe’s administration acts as if it never heard of him either.

Conclusion

The conclusion here is not that Vladimir Putin was not ultimately responsible for the death of Alexy Navalny. That remains to be seen. Instead, the proper conclusions include the following:

It is far too premature to conclude anything.
Such prejudice flies in the face of basic legal assumptions about innocence and guilt.
Alexy Navalny was probably not a freedom fighter.
In fact, there is clear indication that he was a white supremacist and anti-immigrant ultra-nationalist.
He also seems to have been an Islamophobe, an agent of the CIA, and a traitor to his country.
Like all countries, Russia has laws about such matters.
In the light of its treatment of Julian Assange and Gonzalo Lira, the United States has zero moral authority to posture as a champion of prisoners’ rights, freedom of speech, rule of law, prosecutorial rectitude, or extra-judicial assassinations.

O yes, and then there’s all that business about Jeffrey Epstein‘s death in prison . ..