But a more realistic summary of the various crises afflicting the world would note that Putin is correct when he describes past U.S. backing for various extremists, from Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle East and Central Asia to neo-Nazis in Ukraine.(..)
It turns out Gaddafi was not wrong when he warned of Islamist terrorists operating around Benghazi.(..)
But those peaceful interventions made Putin an inviting target for the neocons who began in fall 2013 arranging a coup d’etat in Ukraine on Russia’s border. As Obama and Putin each paid too little attention to these maneuvers, neocons such as National Endowment for Democracy president Carl Gershman, Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland went to work on the Ukrainian coup.(..)
It was the United States along with the European Union that sought to topple the existing system and pull Ukraine from Russia’s orbit into the West’s.(..)
“‘We did not start this,’ he said. ‘Statements that Russia is trying to reinstate some sort of empire, that it is encroaching on the sovereignty of its neighbors, are groundless.’”(..)
Rationality and realism seem to have lost any place in the workings of the mainstream U.S. news media.