Ukraine's Poison Pill for Peace Talks

To stop the rout of government forces last September, the first Minsk ceasefire established a tentative frontline around the rebel strongholds. But Kiev continued to squeeze the rebel-held cities by cutting off access to banking and other services while neo-Nazi and other militias undertook "death squad" operations to kill rebel sympathizers in government-controlled zones.

When that first cease-fire broke down, the rebels made new gains against the Ukrainian military, prompting Merkel and Hollande to broker a second ceasefire, which included a structure for resolving the crisis with a political settlement to grant eastern Ukraine substantial autonomy.

But Nuland and other U.S. hard-liners objected to the concessions and trade-offs arranged by Merkel and Holland and accepted by Poroshenko and Putin. The U.S. hard-liners began plotting how to reverse what they claimed was "appeasement" of "Russian aggression."

The German press has reported on some of this U.S. strategy after the Bild newspaper obtained details of conversations that Nuland and other U.S. officials held behind closed doors last month at a security conference in Munich. Nuland was overheard disparaging the German chancellor's initiative, calling it "Merkel's Moscow thing," according to Bild, citing unnamed sources.

Another U.S. official went even further, the report said, calling it the Europeans' "Moscow bullshit."

Talking Themselves into a Frenzy

The tough talk behind the closed doors at a conference room in the luxurious Bayerischer Hof hotel seemed to be contagious as the American officials, both diplomats and members of Congress, kept escalating their rhetoric, according to the Bild account.

Nuland suggested that Merkel and Hollande cared only about the practical impact of the Ukraine war on Europe: "They're afraid of damage to their economy, counter-sanctions from Russia."

Another U.S. politician was heard adding: "It's painful to see that our NATO partners are getting cold feet" -- with particular vitriol directed toward German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen as "defeatist" because she supposedly no longer believed in a Kiev victory.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, got himself worked up into such a lather that he started making comparisons to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain going to Munich to "appease" Adolf Hitler, likening Merkel to Chamberlain and Putin to Hitler: "History shows us that dictators always take more, whenever you let them. They can't be brought back from their brutal behavior when you fly to Moscow to them, just like someone once flew to this city."

According to the Bild story, Nuland laid out a strategy for countering Merkel's diplomacy by using strident language to frame the Ukraine crisis in a way that stops the Europeans from backing down. "We can fight against the Europeans, we can fight with rhetoric against them," Nuland reportedly said.

NATO Commander Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove was quoted as saying that sending more weapons would "raise the battlefield cost for Putin." Nuland interjected to the U.S. politicians present that "I'd strongly urge you to use the phrase 'defensive systems' that we would deliver to oppose Putin's 'offensive systems.'"

Yet, through all of the past year's scheming and maneuvering by Nuland and other U.S. officials, the mainstream U.S. media has studiously ignored the coup side of the story, insisting that there was no coup and adopting an "I-see-nothing" response to the presence of neo-Nazi militias leading the fight against the ethnic Russian east.

For the New York Times, the Washington Post and the rest of major U.S. press, everything has been explained as "Russian aggression" with Putin supposedly having plotted the entire series of events as a way to conquer much of Europe as the new Hitler. Even though the evidence reveals that Putin was caught off-guard by the coup next door, the U.S. media has insisted on simply passing along Nuland's propaganda themes.

Thus, it is a safe bet that when the current ceasefire breaks down and the killing resumes, all the American people will hear is that it was Putin's fault, that he conspired to destroy the peace as part of his grand scheme of "aggression." And, the Nuland-Yatsenyuk sabotage of Minsk-2 will be the next part of this troubling story to disappear into the memory hole.