By John Varoli, Substack, 3/9/24

John Varoli is a former foreign correspondent for New York Times, Bloomberg and Reuters TV. Trained as a U.S. foreign policy expert with a focus on Russia and Ukraine.

Joe Biden began his State of the Union rant on March 7 by discussing another country — Ukraine. This is quite bizarre and unprecedented in American history. The main point of the State of the Union is to focus on the U.S. and not other countries.

But Ukraine is no ‘other’ country. It’s a place that the Biden family has long seen as its personal vassal state, ripe with highly lucrative corrupt deals. In my last article, I mentioned my work with Ukrainian clients before 2022. At that time, a well-connected client who worked in both the State of Delaware and Kiev told me that in 2010 he helped introduce Biden to Ukraine’s oligarchs. Apparently, it was love at first sight. They spoke each other’s language of ‘money talks’ and abuse of power.

A few years later, in early 2014, Obama and Biden orchestrated a violent insurrection, toppling Ukraine’s elected president and installing a regime loyal to NATO. Naturally, this enraged the Kremlin, which will never tolerate a heavily armed U.S. client state on its southwestern border.

Having started the current conflict with Moscow in 2014, Biden now calls for a total crusade against Russia since it’s a bastion of Conservatism defying the liberal globalist agenda. Also, Biden needs a bogeyman to scare Americans, distract them from their domestic problems and unite them for his reelection. Inciting racist fears of ‘invading Asian hordes’ — whether Russians, Japanese or Chinese — has sadly long been a ploy in U.S. politics.

Even though the U.S. is in a severe economic and financial crisis, with our Constitutional freedoms being stripped away, with crime soaring, social problems exploding and life expectancy rates plunging, here’s how Biden began his speech:

“My purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today. What makes our moment rare is that freedom and democracy are under attack both at home and overseas at the very same time. Overseas, Putin of Russia is on the march, invading Ukraine and sowing chaos throughout Europe and beyond. If anybody in this room thinks Putin will stop at Ukraine, I assure you, he will not. But Ukraine, Ukraine can stop Putin. Ukraine can stop Putin, if we stand with Ukraine and provide the weapons they need to defend itself.”

Nearly every word is a lie. It’s reckless to insinuate that President Putin plans to invade NATO. For 15 years, the Kremlin has repeatedly asked NATO to stop its eastward expansion and to keep Ukraine neutral.

The U.S. pushed NATO to Russia’s border, even though it promised Moscow never to expand eastward. Russia didn’t expand to the U.S. border. Biden’s determination to expand NATO into Ukraine was a red line that the Kremlin clearly said it would respond to with force.

Biden tells us that U.S. interests are closely tied to Zelensky’s Ukraine, which he praises as a great democracy. In fact, Ukraine has become one of the world’s most repressive regimes, where freedom of religion, freedom of the press, freedom of thought, freedom of movement and the political opposition have been brutally stamped out. This regime perpetrates Europe’s most heinous war crimes since 1945 — frequent terrorist attacks against innocent Russian civilians, such as the bombings of Belgorod; and the brutal ten-year siege of Donbass that has killed thousands and made refugees of several millions.

If such a reprehensible regime as Kiev is so dear to Biden’s heart, then what does that make him? It makes him one of the worst villains in modern history. But even worse — what does it make the U.S., since we Americans are now complicit (through silence and cowardice) in this deliberate destruction of the post-1991 international order.

With Biden determined to continue using Ukraine as a battering ram to bring down Russia, this conflict will only end when the Ukrainian people take matters into their own hands and reclaim their freedom and dignity, and to try once again to live in peace with their Slavic brothers and sisters to the east.

Instead of offering a solution that could save thousands of lives, Biden only calls for more war, more suffering, and more death. The world needs constructive solutions and not destructive ones.