from Sputnik News:
Neoconservative elements in Washington have long sought to respond to the perceived threat of Russian military and diplomatic power, but the interests of large Western financial institutions in seeing the proxy war continue have received less attention.
While politicians wage a propaganda war to ensure continued funding for the Western proxy conflict against Russia, average Ukrainians are left to suffer for the sake of powerful outside interests, according to one whistleblower and former diplomat.
TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/
Analyst Andrii Telizhenko, who previously served in Ukraine’s government but fled the country after facing opposition to his anti-war beliefs, joined Sputnik’s The Final Countdown program Monday, lamenting the fate of hundreds of thousands of young Ukrainian men and women who have sacrificed their lives for the intractable US-backed conflict. The former government official said Kiev has lost 970,000 troops since 2022, confirming previous analysis that has placed the number of Ukrainian deaths during the conflict at close to one million.
“Zelensky… could have stopped this war before it started,” said Telizhenko of the controversial figure, whose constitutional mandate as president of Ukraine ended in May. “That’s why he has to continue this rhetoric, to stay in power.”
“He can’t [negotiate] because he’s owned by the West, by Washington, by London, by BlackRock, by the military industrial complex, so they’re not gonna let him do that,” he continued. “They are making money out of this war and getting everything they can out of Ukraine and out of the resources that Ukraine has. So he has no other possibility. He could have stopped it as soon as he became the president in 2019.”
“He could have [granted] Donbass… autonomy without losing hundreds of thousands of lives,” the former diplomat noted, faulting Zelensky for not following through on a peace plan reached with Russia in Istanbul or implementing the Minsk Accords after campaigning on the issue in 2019.