Joe Biden's speech delivered in front of the Royal Castle in Warsaw on Tuesday came at least partially as a response to Vladimir Putin's address to the Federal Assembly.
Biden claimed that the West was not seeking to destroy Russia and immediately contradicted himself by bragging that the US had assembled a worldwide coalition of more than 50 nations to get critical weapons and supplies, including air defense systems, artillery, ammunition, tanks, and armored vehicles, to fight against the Russian military in Ukraine.
He also stated that US Democrats and Republicans alike have united against Russian "autocracy," because "that's what Americans are, and that's what Americans do." The US president further praised the 2014 February coup d'etat in Kiev as the epitome of democracy and called the eight-year shelling of Donbass civilians by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime an example of bravery.
Biden's Upside-Down Logic
"Well, I mean, what do you think the US is going to admit that its geopolitical machinations to permanently flip Ukraine into the NATO bloc is part of their goal of Western hegemony?" Mark Sleboda, a US military veteran and international affairs and security analyst, told Sputnik. "They're just going to say it outright? Of course they're going to cloak it in terms of freedom and democracy. Joe Biden's speech in Warsaw today, he walked out to the tune of an insipid pop song, Freedom by Kygo and Zach Abel. And then he said freedom so many times, right during this speech, I lost count. I lost count at 30-something, to be perfectly honest, I just gave up. But it's like, if you say it enough times, it will become true, I guess. Or it will at least penetrate the brains of the sheeple out there who don't know any better."
According to Sleboda, the US "blob" would never acknowledge that it has ousted legitimately elected democratic governments across the world to reach its own vested and geopolitical goals. Instead, they and their subservient media will continue to push ahead with their propaganda narrative. "It's a very destructive feedback loop of ignorance and propaganda," the US veteran warned.
US President Joe Biden (R) walks next to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky (L) as he arrives for a visit in Kiev on February 20, 2023
© AFP 2023 / DIMITAR DILKOFF
While many US politicians "know nothing about Russia, and simply believe a lot of the ideological absurdities that they are told by the deep state," figures like National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken "do know that all of this is nonsense and it is all just propaganda intended primarily to deceive not the Russian people, but the American people, so that they can continue this geopolitical conflict no matter what it costs the people of the US, Europe or Ukraine," according to Sleboda.
The analyst provided an example of how Russian moves are misinterpreted by the US mainstream media. He cited Moscow's security guarantees given to Biden prior to his "surprising" visit to Kiev. In the eyes of the US media, Russia did this out of "fear"; in reality, Moscow practiced diplomacy, Sleboda underscored.
"[T]he US de-conflicted with Russia before this trip. They let [Russia] know that Biden wanted to come and they asked for security guarantees for Biden. Ironically enough, of course, it was Biden who refused security guarantees for Russia nationally just last year that helped lead to this conflict," Sleboda noted, referring to Washington and NATO's snubbing of Moscow's draft security proposals concerning the bloc's eastward non-expansion and Ukraine's neutrality.
Even though Russia provided guarantees and did not launch any airstrikes against Kiev, the Ukrainian leadership turned on air raid sirens. They did so "because that was great, they're doing it just as a propaganda set piece to create the atmosphere that they want for Biden's trip to support this totalitarian proxy in Kiev," Sleboda underscored.
21 February 2023, 17:29 GMT
Putin's Speech: Logic Behind Special Op & New START Suspension
Putin's February 21 speech comes in contrast to both Biden's theatrical visit to Kiev and the US president's pretentious Warsaw address, according to the US military veteran.
Contrary to outlandish claims voiced by Western and Ukrainian observers, Putin did not announce "a forced mobilization of every student" in the country or a change to the status of the special military operation, Sleboda pointed out. Instead, the Russian president devoted the first 15 to 20 minutes to once again patiently reiterating Russia's rationale for the involvement in the Ukraine conflict, the security analyst emphasized.
"And he did spend a few minutes with boilerplate Putin grievances against the West, all of which are legitimate, at least as far as I'm concerned," Sleboda continued. "But the rest of the next hour and 25 minutes was really spent on the minutia of domestic policy. I mean, he was talking about mortgage rates for families with multiple children, housing coupons for scientists, a stock market investment, and things that people who were looking for some type of, I don't know, Cold War thunder or caricatures of Russian leaders as if he's some kind of James Bond villain were sorely mistaken."
At the end of the speech, Putin "announced that Russia was suspending - not withdrawing, but suspending its operations in the New START Treaty because of the US, well, Kiev regime attacks, using a type of drone that Putin says was upgraded by Western technicians that attempted to make strikes against Russia's airfields like Engels Air Force Base, where they keep their nuclear bombers, part of the nuclear triad," the security analyst noted.
Sleboda explained that "with this type of attack by the West (…) at least with Western facilitation on Russia's strategic industries, the inspections of such nuclear facilities that are allowed under the new START treaty would simply allow them to even better target Russia's strategic deterrence, something that is kind of absurd at a time of open conflict with the West like this."
"So Russia has for the time being, until the state of conflict between Russia and the West ends, suspended their participation in this last part of the Cold War security architecture," the US military veteran underscored.
22 February 2023, 11:12 GMT
Bucharest Nine: Will Biden Further Raise Stakes?
While the Russian leadership has once again outlined its clear position with regard to the militarization of Ukraine by the West and NATO's open claims that the alliance is seeking to impose a strategic defeat on Russia, Biden is meeting the Bucharest Nine on Wednesday.
The Bucharest Nine is a collection of nations in the easternmost parts of the NATO alliance. The group was formed after the 2014 coup in Kiev and subsequent reunification of Crimeans, who rejected the neo-Nazi Ukraine regime, with Russia. The Bucharest Nine is composed mostly of former Soviet Republics and ex-Warsaw Pact members.
According to the Western press, Biden is expected to discuss further military support for Kiev with them. Polish President Andrzej Duda said that he expected the summit to come up with new security proposals for Central and Eastern Europe. The gathering is also a preliminary meeting for the upcoming July NATO summit in Vilnius.