Image above: Mikhail Gorbachev and Helmuth Khol in 1989
This article outlines the reasons why the 2022 Russian invasion should be considered an existential act of self-defence.
By Prof. Marcello Ferrada de Noli. Emeritus Professor of Epidemiology, esp. injury epidemiology (Sweden). The Indicter chief-editor.
I
Since the supreme human right is the right to life, I am by definition opposed to war. That was the meaning with the NGO Swedish Professors and Doctors for Human Rights (SWEDHR). We fight for peace.
In addition, SWEDHR’s founding manifesto explicitly calls for respect for the Charter of the United Nations. Let us observe that respect for that Charter has been systematically broken over the last decades. For example, in the Balkan wars with the bombing (by NATO), not authorized by the UN, of Serbia. Or the invasion of Iraq under the pretext of the false narrative of (non-existent) massive weapons of destruction in the possession of Saddam Hussein. Or Pinochet’s 1973 coup d’état in Chile, sponsored by the Nixon/Kissinger administration, under the pretext of a fabulation called “Plan Z,” falsely attributed to the MIR and other parties that supported democratically elected President Salvador Allende.
Human rights, as defined by the UN, have been consistently neglected by many of the Western powers, including those of EU members. Freedom of expression is now drastically violated in the European Union by decree of its leadership with the support of European governments. Statements or opinions that contravene their ideology result in denunciations, arrests and imprisonment. This behaviour of the European leadership has been denounced by the new Vice President of the United States, James David Vance; a denunciation that the experience of this author shares.
On the one hand, armed hostilities in Ukraine did not begin in February 2022, but in February 2014. In other words, the war in Ukraine is not three years old but a decade old. Considering diplomacy and negotiations as the only instruments for resolving international conflicts, I have welcomed and supported from The Indicter and the social platform X, the US/Russian initiative to seek a prompt solution to the conflict.
On the other hand, a very important, or crucial, historical fact is represented by the promises made to the Russian Federation that NATO would not expand in a direction close to its borders. Incontestable evidence is found in the document “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard,” in the National Scurity Archive:
“Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders by Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major and Woerner…Who promised what to whom in NATO expansion?“
In the context of that documented information – which, although it dates back years, is only now being widely known – a heated debate is currently taking place about “who started the war in Ukraine”. It should be labelled, in my opinion, “why the war in Ukraine started”.
U.S. President Donald Trump went so far as to mention that the war was started by the Ukrainians, not Russia. The almost unanimous response of the leaders of “the West” – including that of the president of Chile, Gabriel Boric – has been that it is Russia that has the responsibility… for having invaded the territory of Ukraine. And it is true that Russia did it; But why did he do it?
In this article, I will provide the reasons why Russia’s invasion in 2022 should be considered a necessary act of self-defense – a conclusion I have maintained solid all since the beginning of the SMO in February that year.
II
Respect for human rights in a society, versus their transgression, is always a function dependent on the political determinations of its rulers.
The mainstream media want to show the position of this or that country as representing a popular opinion, rooted in its citizens. It is spoken, for example, “in Sweden they decided that…”, or “Chile gave its opinion at the meeting so-and-so”, etc. However, this is not the case.
None of these government positions on Ukraine have been submitted to a plebiscite (referendum). Not even Sweden’s entry into NATO – which led to the irresponsible abandonment of centuries of neutrality and the proactive struggle for world peace (remember, for example, the times of Olof Palme) – was decided in a referendum, but by a circumstantial parliamentary majority. [1]
I say that these determinations made by ruling elites are not infrequently the product of interests, including personal, power or fortune. We see it in the case of rampant official corruption in Ukraine.
But, unfortunately, these determinations are in many cases also the product, apparently, of inadequate information on the part of the ruling elites on the causes and contexts of international conflicts – both contemporary and past. Which is not acceptable.
Chilean President Gabriel Boric’s statements against President Trump’s (US) pacifist initiatives are highlighted by the pro-belligerent EU press, particularly in Germany, which wants to continue the war in Ukraine at all costs… and at all costs.
Ignorance is not an argument; but in the hands of those who hold power it is a weapon, a blind weapon. It is a devastating boomerang not for the ignorant who launches it, but it can fall in the middle of the geopolitical destiny of the entire country, not only in the future political career of its irresponsible president.
Therefore, a serious analysis of the conflict in Ukraine must also necessarily consider the following issues. These are facts that are very rarely mentioned in the media. And as far as the European Union is concerned, they are practically hidden:
- The political outcome of the 2014 Ukraine coup was engineered by the U.S. (See the transcript of a phone conversation – leaked recording later published by the BBC, about the exchange between Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt), [1] with the collaboration of representatives of EU governments, in particular the Swedish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Carl Bildt. [2]
Incidentally, those were the times – as early as 2014 – when Carl Bildt anticipated that nothing positive would ever come from talks with Russia on the issue of Ukraine. [3] As demonstrated between December 2021 and February 2022, a constructive dialogue with Russia by the West was not on the agenda. But provoking Russia to respond with a military operation of proportions was apparently already outlined in the 2014 plan. The war was provoked
- The ethnic cleansing against the ethnic Russian population of Donbass, a population that was called “subhuman”.
Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk refers to the Russian-ethnic population of Donbass as “subhuman.” A term that – during World War II – was used by the Nazis in both Germany and Ukraine to refer to Jews.
This is how they were called – “subhumans” – by the then Prime Minister of Ukraine, Arseniy Yatsenyuk. [4] Which began just a few weeks after the February 2014 coup. Meanwhile, Carl Bildt – then Sweden’s foreign minister – held official talks with the Ukrainian government born of the coup, and in which the party leader participated Svoboda.
Svoboda is a far-right political party, with neo-Nazi ideology and also decorating itself with symbolic paraphernalia inspired by Hitler’s National Socialism. Svoboda was founded in 1991 as the National Social Party of Ukraine , [5] and whose emblem is shared by the neo-Nazi military regiment “Azov“, a regiment that is part of the National Guard of Ukraine. [6] In passing, an official representative of this neo-Nazi regiment was greeted with cheers by the Danish parliament three days ago.
The US, as well as the Swedish military and other NATO countries, have been involved all along since the 2014 coup, including until (officially) February 2022, in the arming and training of the Ukrainian National Guard. [7] The neo-Nazi formations mentioned above are not the only ones operating in Ukraine. For example, another large group is the pro-Nazi far-right called “Right Sector”. [8]
Another example of the proactive neo-fascist ideology of Ukraine’s political elites is described in a report by Reuters (March 17, 2015), quotes: “Ukraine’s parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, passed a draft law last month that pays tribute to organizations involved in acts of mass ethnic cleansing during World War II.” [9]
This video shows one of the many episodes that led the inhabitants of Donbass (Russian-ethnic population) to declare autonomy from the Kiev government. These are the current territories of the Donetsk and Luhansk republics, respectively. To watch the video click on the image above, or here.
- The UN had estimated [10] that some 14,000 deaths (including more than 3,000 civilians) occurred during the so-called “ATO”, the “anti-terrorist” operation undertaken by the Poroshenko regime against the populations of Donbass. That, and no other, was the real death toll in Ukraine at the time Russia decided to launch military operations in the country, with the aim, it was declared, of denazifying the Ukrainian forces that Russia has blamed for the massacre of ethnic Russians in Donbass. Instead, the West and its media are counting the fatalities in the “war in Ukraine” as if that list had only begun now on February 24, 2022.
- The significance of the February 2014 Maidan coup d’état in Ukraine – particularly with regard to human rights violations – has meant the implementation of ethnic cleansing, with documented crimes against the populations of the Donbass. For example, the “Three massacres in one month”, [11] refer to the bloody events in Mariupol [12] [13] and Odessa [14] in May 2014, and the aerial bombardment of civilians in Luhansk in June 2014. [15] In July 2014, the U.S. State Department went so far as to publicly endorse “Ukraine’s full right” to bomb ethnic Russians in Donbass from the air. [16]
III
Since the immediate aftermath of the February 2014 coup was known, SWEDHR began to record how NATO and its partners have waged a war over the expansion of their powers in Ukraine, sacrificing Ukrainian lives in the name of their geopolitical expansionism and global economic interests. In denouncing these crimes related to ethnic cleansing and human rights abuses in Ukraine, it was also imperative for us to fill the void that both Amnesty International and HRW had deliberately left about what was happening in Ukraine – according to a well-known routine of protecting NATO’s interests with their silence.
The leadership of SWEDHR has agreed, from early on, to the independence of the Donbass republics, as resolved by their main ethnic populations. It was precisely the documented widespread human rights violations against the population of Donbass by Ukraine and Nazi forces [see above], that led to our stance.
Information, war and human rights
“Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.”
Over the years I have become a relentless fighter for freedom of expression, a vital component of Human Rights. At SWEDHR we have tirelessly advocated for transparency in information, and for those in power to give a truthful and transparent account of their actions.
In the context of ‘Western propaganda’, we denounce fake news [17] and arbitrarily selected information about Ukraine, and we have also opposed censorship and repression of freedom of expression by corporate social networks.
We see the EU’s censorship action clearly against Article 19 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Those authorities have adopted a kind of extraordinary censorship, as if their countries, their troops, were participating directly in the war. As if they were declared belligerent countries. Which, paradoxically, is something they vehemently deny. The truth demonstrated in these years is that the war in Ukraine is a war-by-proxy. It has been the war of the whole of NATO and the EU against Russia. Today the U.S. government has taken another position, and recognizes that Russia was inevitably provoked in this war. Moreover, the former head of the Pentagon sometimes stated that for them, the United States, this war was a good opportunity to weaken, or deplete, the war and economic resources of the Russian Federation. In the end it did not turn out that way, but the opposite.
And the greatest weakening is not suffered by the hierarchs of the EU, but by the home economies of the peoples of Europe. And this, as a result of the EU sanctions against Russia, which began with the ban on Russian gas imports.
To be sure, these bans, accompanied by the persecution of independent voices, which are framed by self-proclaimed non-belligerent democratic nations, portray the EU’s system of “democracy” as leading backwards down dangerous paths, where a single destiny is to re-enter the dark times of, say, the “Western democracies” of Italy and Germany in the mid-1930s.
Russia has also limited freedom of information, and even more drastically with regard to its domestic audience. All limitations on free dissemination/publication are condemnable, anywhere. However, one difference between Russia and the current limitations on freedom of expression in the West is that, for example, in EU countries, different opinions are not currently a threat to the national security of these countries. Divergent opinions, such as ours from SWEDHR, only denounce the inconsistency of the actions of those in power. But they are not a threat to Sweden’s national security.
When today the Western powers – considering that they are “not at war” – close transmissions or cancel online access to Russian or Chinese news sites, they do so in violation of the rights of their citizens to select and receive information from the channels they have the right to choose – according to the UN Charter of Human Rights (See mention of Article 19, above). Obviously, this flagrant violation of the basic human rights of our citizens is not problematised by the media of EU countries – which have otherwise – paradoxically – proclaimed themselves as “defenders” of democratic principles and the “rule of law”.
Instead, Russia is openly at war. If any of the NATO countries, and their “partners” such as Sweden, decide to enter the war in Ukraine by means of casus bellis represented by ostensible provocations (see “defensive weapons” to Ukraine, below), inexorably also those countries will dictate states of emergency that include measures as drastic as Russia today, or perhaps even more. During World War II, Sweden, despite considering itself a “neutral”, non-belligerent country, detained without trial left-wing opposition voices such as “communists”, “anarchists” and confined them in concentration camps called ” Internment camps “. [18]
Fake news is also the omission of important information. For example, and from the perspective of fairness and objectivity in information, it is unacceptable for Western corporate media to hide or cover up [19] deliberately the existence of the pro-Azi military formations that we have mentioned here.
Defensive weapons for Ukraine? Not at all the case. EU wants war!
In the picture above prime minsters of Denmark and respectively Sweden, Mette Frederiksen and Ulf Kristersson. Las élites políticas, militares y culturales de Suecia, Dinamarka y Finland, incluidos sus medios de comunicación, sufren de una profunda rusofobia. Una de las causas que se cita a menudo sobre aquel xenofóbico sentimiento en contra de Rusia, es la derrota de Suecia a manos del ejército ruso en Poltava (ciudad ahora en Ucrania), en 1709, y que puso fin a la influencia geopolítica de Suecia en la región del Báltico.
We are witnessing a real race between EU countries and other NATO countries to provide even more weapons to Ukraine. Incredibly, we have even had to listen to the recent statements of the Prime Minister of Denmark, Mette Frederiksen, who has stated that, for both Ukraine and Europe, establishing peace in Ukraine could be “more dangerous than war” (“Peace in Ukraine may be more dangerous than ongoing war”, per Ukrainska Pravda, February 24, 2025). It is also reported that most Danes support sending troops to Ukraine in a European military coalition.ƒ
Huge packages of military assistance continue to be sent to Ukraine, even after contacts between the US and Russia to find a peace formula in the conflict have begun. Sweden has just approved the largest military aid delivered to Ukraine over the course of the conflict (and even before February 2022). It is announced that the newly elected (future chancellor) of Germany, the Christian Democrat Friedrich Merz, will probably lift the veto that Olof Scholz had imposed on the Taurus missiles, which are already in Ukraine, not to be used to attack deep territories of Russia. Great Britain announced on February 16, 2025 its determination to send troops to Ukraine; the Swedish Minister of Defence openly states that Sweden does not rule out sending troops. Earlier it was known that France would be willing to contribute with a contingent of 10,000 troops. Etc.
However, the main argument of our criticism of the pro-NATO elites in power in Europe is not based solely on military-technical issues. Instead, it is the political theme of “national security,” a mantra that is perennially repeated in the narrative of Swedish warmongering military and political personalities – to legitimize diplomatic and military actions against Russia. This, while absolutely no evidence has been presented about a possible aggressive plan by Russia against Europe, to invade neighboring European countries, etc. Which otherwise defies all logic.
Russia’s position so far has been one of defensive activity:
Russia said that if NATO and the EU did not consider its demands for guarantees that NATO would not expand further with the inclusion of the border with Ukraine, they would respond militarily and technically. So they did.
Russia has also said that if countries from, for example, the EU, interfere with its “military operations” in Ukraine, specifically by sending weapons and similar destructive materials, Russia will consider those countries in a belligerent state against its armed forces. They did.
Russia has announced that, in view of the current situation (not in Ukraine, but in the position of NATO and the “partners”), it would put its nuclear power on alert. They did.
At the same time, incongruously, EU politicians and their media accuse Russia’s president of “barbarism”. And on top of that, pseudopsychiatric diagnoses of the type “crazy”, “totally crazy”, “unbalanced” are also widespread in the media of these countries, especially in Sweden, which is only a couple of hundred kilometers from Russia. Iskander missiles stationed in Kaliningrad.
So our question is, why are Sweden and some other countries in Europe so desperately trying to provoke a military response from Russia? Particularly if such a decision would be made by a man “out of his mind”?
Who, really, is crazy here?
IV
In short, the world is witnessing how the corporate West and its political puppets in the EU leadership have created this confrontation with Russia:
- a) in order to increase their military budgets (e.g. Germany, Sweden, etc.), which means a drastic increase in their profits from the arms industry.
- b) replace Russian oil funnelled to Europe with US oil-producing companies, [20] as well as other ‘international players’ also in financial partnership with Western corporations.
In our analysis, which we are willing to discuss with any other NGO, the current war in Ukraine would have been perfectly avoided if NATO and its ‘partners’ had demonstrated a minimum required openness to Russia’s security concerns. It is a historical fact, demonstrated in 30 different documents from 1990 onwards, [21] that NATO government leaders, including US presidents, the US secretary of state, and the US secretary of state, gave assurance after assurance that NATO would not expand eastward. In that sense, we consider Russia’s concern about NATO’s current expansion – now with the “NATO-option” admissions of Sweden and Finland and the imminent incorporation of Ukraine – to be quite legitimate.
Click on the image above, or here, for a video evidencing the West’s promises to Russia that there will be “no further expansion of NATO to the East, approaching the borders of the Russian Federation.” Which was not fulfilled. A fact recognized today by the government of President Donald Trump.
Today, three years into the war in Ukraine, the new US administration declares that a NATO seat was never promised to Ukraine. But during the fruitless negotiations that preceded the start of the Russian invasion, the issue of whether or not to include Ukraine in NATO was declared a “non-starter” by the Biden administration and its allies. They left the issue up in the air, in “doubt”, instead of having clarified – as President Trump, and even the opportunistic NATO Secretary General, Rucke is doing now – that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO.
That would have been enough for Russia not to feel an eminent threat that NATO missiles, bases and troops would soon reach its borders.
It was after Russia began military operations in Ukraine that the US (not the EU) began to indicate that Ukraine’s accession to NATO could wait at least 5 or 6 years. But none of that was conceded at the negotiating table. Instead, all that time was a resounding no to Russia’s proposal. NATO and the EU refused to give any guarantees. The Western powers knew that their stubborn refusal would cost them the war in Ukraine – they announced it all the time during the negotiations. They wanted war and war they got it, thinking that an exhausted post-war Russia is exactly in the Western geopolitical design, i.e., increasing its dominance of the global market.
What the uneducated, history-denying or simply ignorant European Russophobic elites in power have irresponsibly forgotten, is that Russia possesses the absolutely most effective nuclear capability in the world. Not only in terms of the number of nuclear warheads, but also in terms of weapons of release. An example is the unstoppable hypersonic generation missiles. And now the “Oreshnik”.
SWEDHR was founded in 2014, precisely in the context of the events mentioned earlier in this statement. It was precisely the horrendous, and literally, bloody attacks on human rights and the human lives of people in Donbass that was a powerful reason that motivated the start of SWEDHR’s whistleblowing enterprise, aimed at improving human dignity. [22] [23]
The provocations of the West have brought humanity to the brink of total destruction. SWEDHR calls for resistance to the army of fake news creators in the Western corporate media, who today are instigating a deepening of the conflict in Ukraine. Instead, let us increase the calls for peace.
In that regard, I believe that the best contribution to peace is a negotiated diplomatic solution aimed at Ukraine’s status of neutrality and non-alignment. The same goes for Sweden, with my deep hopes that the government will one day put the question of whether or not we should remain in NATO to a national referendum.
https://profdenoli.substack.com/p/a-tres-anos-de-la-guerra-por-que
References
[1] BBC, “Ukraine Crisis: Transcript of Leaked Nuland-Pyatt Call,” February 7, 2014 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
[2] M Ferrada de Noli, “A Swedish Far-Right ‘Diplomacy’? Or Bildt’s solo support for Ukraine’s nationalists?”, March 6, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/03/06/bildtsukraineextrem/
[3] M Ferrada de Noli, “Carl Bildt on Swedish TV: “Go ahead, we don’t know if there is a chance of a political solution with Russia”, December 8, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/12/ 08/carl-bildt-exist-possibilities-for-a-political-solution-in-russia/
[4] CNN, June 15, 2014, “Prime Minister Astounds Ukraine to Eliminate Killers”
[5] Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social-National_Party_of_Ukraine
[6] Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion
[7] M Ferrada de Noli, 20 February 2022
https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/1495404412805779463
[8] Wikipedia article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_Sector
[9] Reuters, “Vladimir Putin Calls Ukraine Fascist and the Country’s New Law Helps Make His Case” https://www.reuters.com/article/idUS208024656920150514
[10] United Nations. Human rights. Civilian casualties related to the conflict in Ukraine, 8 October 2021
[11] M Ferrada de Noli, “Fascists of Ukraine: Three Massacres in Just One Month.” June 3, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/06/03/ukraine-fascists-3-genocides-per-month/
[12] M Ferrada de Noli, “The killing of Mariupol civilians by the Ukrainian army on 9 May 2014: they shot and killed unarmed civilians at point-blank range”, 9 May 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/05/10/ukraine -army-massacre-of-civilians-of-mariupol-9-May-2014/
[13] M Ferrada de Noli, “Ukrainian soldiers shooting at crowd in Mariupol 2014. Contributing cause to the independence of Donbass?”, March 2, 2022
[14] M Ferrada de Noli, “The Odessa Massacre of May 2, 2014. Updated Evidence”, May 15, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/05/15/odessa-massacre-firebombs-thrown-by-pro- junta-activistas-quemar-vivo-43/
[15] M Ferrada de Noli, “The massacre of unarmed civilians by the Ukrainian junta air force in Luhansk, June 2, 2014,” June 3, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/06/03/what-responsibility-does-sweden “to have in-the-massacres-of-civilians-perpetrated-by-Ukraine-junta/
[16] M Ferrada de Noli, “U.S. State Department Publicly Endorses All Rights of Ukraine to Bomb Ethnic Russian Population in Donbass,” July 8, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/07/08/the-us- State-Department-Publicly Supports-Ukraine-All-The-Right-to-Air-Bomb-The-Russian-Ethnic-Population-in-Donbass/
[17] Fake news has abounded in the narrative of Western media. One example is the report in the Swedish media that Turkey had stopped Russian navy ships in the Black Sea.
https://twitter.com/ProfessorsBlogg/status/149765314638252032
[18] “Internment Camps in Sweden During World War II” https://military-history.fandom.com/wiki/Internment_camps_in_Sweden_durante_World_War_II
[19] The Atlantic Council even goes so far as to defend the Azov Battalion from accusations of terrorism made even by US political figures. “Why Azov Should Not Be Designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization”, 24 February 2020. https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/why-azov-should-not-be-designated-a-foreign-terrorist-organization /
[20] M. Ferrada de Noli, “What is the Ukraine crisis about”. Teachers’ blog Tuesday June 11th, 2014 https://professorsblogg.com/2014/06/11/what-the-ukraine-crisis-is-all-about-usb-2-stealth-strategic-bombers-now-landing-in -Europe/
[21] National Security Archive, “NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard,” December 12, 2017 https://tinyurl.com/2s399vu2
[22] We wrote in our founding manifesto: “We will begin with a commitment on the effects of war crimes on the civilian population of Gaza and eastern Ukraine.” https://swedhr.org/swedish-professors-doctors-for-human-rights/swedhr-manifest/
[23] M Ferrada de Noli, “War Crimes in Ukraine”, 25 January 2015 https://professorsblogg.com/2015/01/25/war-crimes-in-ukraine/