I'm actually not sure whether Walt thinks the U.S. was heavily involved in Operation Spiderweb or not. As can be seen by the nested quotes above, I had been arguing with him as to who really started the war in Ukraine.
I would think most often it's the "side" that fires the first shot that starts a war. Putin fired the first shot into Ukraine.
No, that would be those behind the Euromaidan crisis way back in 2014. It was in 2014 that the civil war in Ukraine started and it started -because- of Euromaidan and the removal of Viktor Yanukovych, the elected President of Ukraine at the time. A good article on the Euromaidan crisis, published on the day Russia's military operation began:
As Russia actually do launch an invasion or “special operation” in Ukraine, we thought now was a good time to recap on how we got here. The historical, political and ethnic divisions in…
off-guardian.org
Here's an article on the darkest day of the Euromaidan crisis, where almost 100 Ukrainians, from protesters to police officers were killed by mercenaries, directed by Ukrainians on the far right, and perhaps most interesting of all, American military operative Brian Christopher Boyenger:
The interviews with three snipers of Georgian nationality, conducted by the Italian journalist Gian Micalessin and aired as a breathtaking documentary on Milan-based Canale 5 (Matrix program) have not paved their way to the international mainstream media.
www.globalresearch.ca
Note that they cite an Italian documentary made in 2017 that does an expose on the matter. These facts are important for later on in my post.
The article links to Brian's facebook page, which no longer works, but I clicked on it when it still did. I just found another article that gets into the same event here:
Once denounced by Zelensky as a “criminal,” gun runner Serhiy Pashinksy has become the top private supplier of arms to Ukraine. Eyewitness testimony has fingered Pashinsky as the architect of a blo…
scheerpost.com
Now ofcourse, if people started digging deeper into this, it would be absolutely lethal to Ukraine's narrative, so it stands to reason that Ukraine would produce a page denying the claims, which can be seen here:
The fourth anniversary of Ukraine’s Maidan Revolution is not only an important historical milestone for the country; it is also a significant disinformation opportunity for the Kremlin propaganda machine. Vesti nedeli (News of the Week), a weekly current affairs show on the state run Rossiya 1
www.stopfake.org
What I find interesting is that the stopfake article starts with a Russian article on the issue, which they don't link to (they link to the site). But even from the title snapshot that they took, it's clear that the Russian article's main story is the italian documentary in question. I did a bit of digging and found the Russian article they don't link to:
Italian journalist Gian Micalessin's interviews with three Georgian mercenaries who took part in the shooting massacre of protesters and police in Kiev in early 2014, and led to the overthrow of the Ukrainian government, have dismantled...
sputnikglobe.com
Stopfake is produced by a Ukrainian NGO:
en.wikipedia.org
Some interesting information on stopfake.org, which would explain its bias against those critical of Ukraine's far right:
**
Zaborona article alleging ties to far-right groups
In 2020, the Zaborona website published a report, co-authored by Ukrainian journalist Ekaterina Sergatskova [uk], which accused StopFake of having links with Ukrainian far-right and neo-Nazi groups, such as S14. The report included that Marko Suprun, host of StopFake's English-language video program, had been shown in social media photographs at a gathering with two musicians from Holocaust-denying white power band Sokyra Peruna [uk] and another controversial band Komu Vnyz. The report also stated that the director and founder of StopFake, Yevhen Fedchenko, had tweeted in defence of S14 on one occasion, spoken against freedom of the press and supported the website Myrotvorets. Following this Sergatskova was subjected to online harassment from commentators and hard right figures, including death threats and posting of her personal information, and she left Kyiv, reporting fears for her life.
**
Source:
en.wikipedia.org
One final note, I just found a much more recent Sputnik article from 2024 pointing out that a mainstream media outlet had finally covered this story:
Ten years after the Euromaidan coup in Ukraine, a mainstream UK media outlet published an op-ed questioning why the West supported violent mobs against elected president Viktor Yanukovich, stressing that the roots of today's Ukraine conflict lie in the February 2014 regime change operation.
sputnikglobe.com