Jeffrey Sachs has calmly delivered short presentations that give context to the the Ukraine War that you will never hear on Corporate media. For most self-declared Democrats I know, the history of the Ukraine War started in 2022. They are off by a few decades, as Sachs Discusses (I created this transcript based on the following video:

Yesterday was the most important day for peace in maybe decades. Actually, this war in Ukraine resulted from a very bad idea of the United States taken in 1994 it’s a project. The project was a project to expand NATO forever, anywhere. Just keep moving east. Keep moving, not only to the first wave, which was the Prime Minister’s country, Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia, but then move eastward, closer to the former Soviet Union, into the former Soviet Union, surround Russia in the Black Sea region, go all the way to little country in the south caucuses, Georgia. It was mind boggling. Clinton signed onto that in 1994 it became what we call the deep state project, meaning it didn’t really matter who the President was. Each president would come and basically would be informed NATO is moving eastward, you’re part of that process.

So Clinton started it in 1994 and as Prime Minister Orban said, he mentioned briefly in 1990 on February 9, 1990 in unequivocal, clear as can be terms the United States, and said to President Michel Gorbachev NATO, will not move one inch eastward. And if you have any doubt about it, all the documents are now online available. You can scrutinize everything. Hans Dietrich Genscher, the US, the German foreign minister said the same thing same day. He’s on tape actually explaining, no, no, I don’t just mean within eastern Germany. I mean anywhere to the east. Clinton, being Clinton and the US Deep State, being the US Deep State, started this project in 1994 they already had the idea, by the way, in 1991 92 as soon as the Soviet Union ended, aha. Now we move now we move eastward. Now we control everything. Now we are the sole superpower.

So this has gone on for 30 years, and each president got into it. Under George Bush Junior, seven more countries were added, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria and Romania. Nine, in 2004 then in 2007 President Putin said at the summit that’s taking place right now, the Munich Security Summit said, Stop! You told us no expansion, not an eastward expansion, even an inch, you said. You’ve now done 10 countries. Stop! Perfectly reasonable. Stop.

I don’t think our president, Donald Trump, would much like to see China and Russia building their military bases up from Central America. You know, this was how the Russians saw this. Why are you coming to our border when you told us you weren’t going to move? And there was one other thing that was very important in this which is probably the most decisive thing and almost not even recognized in 2002 the US did something really, really, really destabilizing, and that is it unilaterally left the anti ballistic missile treaty that was a core strategy to stop a nuclear war between the two super powers. Because what ABM had done for 30 years was to say, we each have deterrence. You, if you strike us, we can strike back. We’ll limit our anti ballistic missiles so that both sides maintain deterrence in 2002 the United States, unilaterally unprovoked, walked out of the ABM said, no, no, we’re not going to do it anymore. We’re going to put anti ballistic missile systems into Russia’s bordering territories.

The Russians said, Are you kidding? The US said, What’s your problem? We do what we want. So in 2007 Putin said, Stop, already. In 2008 George. George Bush Jr. doubled down as Americans typically do, and said, Okay, now we’re moving to Ukraine and to Georgia. That was why this war occurred.

But Ukraine had one more sliver of of life, and that was that they elected a president in 2010 that didn’t want to be part of NATO, and the public didn’t want to be part of NATO. Why? Because they knew this is very dangerous. Why get into this provocative situation? His name was Victor Yanukovych. Americans don’t like neutrality, but Yanukovych was trying to be neutral between the two sides, and the US played a rather unfortunate role on February 22 2014 in a violent overthrow of this person. And that’s when the war started.

And it’s been now 10 years and no president has told the truth until yesterday. By the way, yesterday is a historic day, because the call took place between President Putin and President Trump. It was the first call. We don’t know if there had been a short call before then between the two of them, but there was no call by Biden and Putin with war going on for three years. No call. And now there was a call, and the readout from the American side was excellent. What President Trump said in the call was, we respect Russia. We hear Russia’s concerns. We fought on the same side in World War Two. Nice point, by the way, true. Russia lost Soviet Union, lost 27 million people in World War Two, and was an ally of the United States. The fact that wasn’t mentioned for years and years and years by President Biden and then the defense secretary, Heg said, the new Defense Secretary, said yesterday, the truth for the first time: that Ukraine is not going to join NATO. This is the basis for peace. This is absolutely the basis for peace. And they couldn’t tell the truth for three decades. They could not admit what any of us knew, because I have been around this region for 36 years. In detail, I sat with Boris Yeltsin. I sat with Mikhail Gorbachev. But the Americans would not tell the truth publicly until yesterday that this was so provocative, it was a game.

They thought they’d win the game. I don’t know how many people here play or played in their childhood, the game of Risk. The game of Risk was a big game for me. You wanted your piece on every part of the world map. That was the game when you took over the whole world, world hegemony, we now call it, you won. They’re playing that game until this administration. So the two most important, three important things have happened, in my view, in this administration so far. First, our new Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, told the fundamental truth, we are in a multi polar world. First time the sentence was uttered, he told the truth. What does it mean? The American mindset for 30 years was we run the show? Marco Rubio said, well, we don’t run the show. We live with other powerful countries. Great start. Second and third were the two events yesterday. So I’m feeling about peace that this is really something that happened yesterday.

If they follow through, we know what Washington is like. There’s every crazy idea swarming, still a project of 30 years doesn’t go down necessarily in one phone call or one statement by the Secretary of Defense, but it’s pretty important that it was said so publicly and so visibly. And of course, Europe is in a tizzy because Europe signed on to the US project. All these politicians in Europe are there where they are, because they were part of the US project, and now the US is reversing its project. And you didn’t tell us, and you didn’t What are we supposed to do? We’re way out there, and so they’re completely befuddled.

And I have to say, I told them, personally, many of these leaders, and I mean personally, one by one, for years, you are going to get trapped this way because this project doesn’t work. It doesn’t make sense. It’s a game for the Americans, but It’s life and death for the Russians. So it cannot be won by the American side. It’s impossible. And I tried to tell them, and nobody in Europe either had the clarity or the guts to see it, except the person that preceded me in this seat, Prime Minister Orban, because he was completely clear about this from the first day. Now, others are starting, but even till today, the Europeans can’t get it because they’re so deeply invested in something that makes no sense. They should have said, Russia is big. It lives near, near us. Let’s cooperate. That’s how You do it.