By John Catalinotto
July 21, 2026
Can a nuclear war start in Ukraine? Considering the catastrophe that the U.S.-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine poses, one may ask: Why so little attention in the U.S. media?
NATO map shows how expansion in Eastern Europe and the Baltics threatened Russia.
There’s a reason: The media are overwhelmed by coverage of the live and dangerous U.S. war on Iran. The direct and full use of the Pentagon’s destructive force and the live threat to U.S. troops fills newspaper headlines and social media debate. There is also an argument among the U.S. rulers over the MAGA regime’s handling of the war on Iran.
Within the movement in the U.S. that arose after absorbing the horror of the U.S.-backed Israeli genocide against Palestinians, the Ukraine war is less studied, understood and debated. This is understandable, as the Ukraine war developed over decades, but the corporate media falsely presents it as starting with the Russian intervention in February 2022.
An outline of the history of the conflict in Ukraine, at least one starting in 2013, can begin to redress this situation. The linked articles supply additional details.
The last 12 years
In the year 2013, and for decades earlier, U.S. foreign policy toward Ukraine included support for all anti-Soviet and anti-Russian elements, like the historical pro-Nazi Banderists. The imperialists’ objective was to overthrow any Ukrainian government that had normal relations with Russia.
During the Barack Obama administration, the Democratic Party’s neocon in the state department, Victoria Nuland, was the undersecretary in Ukraine aiding all the anti-Russia forces. She boasted that Washington had spent $5 billion in this effort, which succeeded in early 2014.
Nuland chastised European Union (EU) leaders who were less than zealous against Russia. She was caught on tape once saying, “F–k the EU.” (workers.org/2013/12/12050/)
Republican Senator John McCain, another neocon militarist, also campaigned in Ukraine against any government friendly toward Russia, or even neutral. (workers.org/2014/02/12905/)
The first pro-West regime in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, outlawed the official use of the Russian language, the first language of millions of people in the eastern provinces of the Donbass region. In May 2014 in Odessa, fascists set fire to a union center and murdered dozens of labor unionists.
The ethnic Russians of Crimea voted almost unanimously to become part of Russia. Two eastern Donbass provinces seceded and declared themselves independent states.
The regime in Kiev, with NATO aid, waged war on Donbass to repress provinces that are majority ethnic and linguistic Russians. In the ensuing eight years, some 14,000 people were killed on both sides, including over 3,000 civilians, mainly in the Donbass.
NATO expansion provokes war
Ever since world imperialism succeeded in overturning the socialist society in the former Soviet Union, the U.S. ruling class’s long-term goal has been to reduce all the former Soviet republics, including Russia, to mere colonies. U.S. and NATO allies used the Kiev regime in an attempt to weaken Russia and seize Ukraine’s land and resources. In effect, Ukrainian youths were and are cannon fodder of war of the imperialist West (NATO) against Russia.
Meanwhile. NATO kept expanding toward the Russian border. In late 2021, the Russian government warned that Moscow considers the expansion of NATO eastward and the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO as an existential threat to Russia that will require decisive countermeasures.
The Joe Biden administration refused to take steps to address Russian concerns. On the contrary, it continued to provoke Russia. This led to the Russian intervention at the end of February 2022.
The U.S. government used the Russian intervention to expand military assistance to Kiev, to break EU countries from economic ties with Russia and to absorb Baltic states, plus Finland and Sweden, into NATO. These attempts to isolate, sanction and break Russia’s economy, however, failed to break Russia or force Russia to submit. (workers.org/2022/04/63335/ )
NATO expansion has led to an extended war in Ukraine and has exposed the regimes controlling the major EU countries as warmongers overseeing the biggest military expansion of those countries since World War II. Accompanying the military growth are cuts to social benefits won over decades by the West European working class.
The U.S. and EU corporate media and government propaganda falsely blames the crisis in Ukraine on Russia and President Vladimir Putin. These lies are as false and dangerous as the anti-Iran, anti-Hezbollah and anti-Palestinian propaganda is.
It is in the interest of European (and U.S.) workers to dismantle NATO and for the EU countries to normalize relations with Russia.
