First of all, Mr Baud asserts that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine was planned well before 2022. As early as 2019, a former adviser to the Ukrainian president stated that such a conflict was necessary for Ukraine because it would facilitate its accession to NATO.
“Here we have a conflict that started with a very specific objective, which is to make Russia collapse. And we know this because we have the interview with Oleksiy Arestovytch [former adviser to President Zelensky] from March 2019 where he explains this strategy very clearly.”
We also know that Ukraine was planning to introduce troops into Russian territory on the Crimean peninsula and on the territory of the Donbass, which had not yet been attached to Russia at the time. The special military operation is therefore nothing more than a preventive measure to deter Ukrainian aggression.
“There is a decree that was issued in March 2021, which was immediately followed by preparations by the Ukrainian army to make an assault on the Donbass, which began to materialise in February and which triggered the Russian intervention.”
Jacques Baud also spoke about the current state of the Ukrainian conflict. More specifically, he talked about the way it is portrayed by the Western media. According to the former Swiss intelligence officer, all the major Western media are now engaged in typical war propaganda, talking incessantly about Russia’s imminent “defeat”, with all dissidents immediately subjected to the cancel culture.
“One way or another, all the major Western media are aligned with this narrative [of Russia’s defeat]. And dissenting voices have been automatically dismissed. We saw this on social networking platforms. All possible sources of alternative narratives were systematically removed.”
However, there is a major drawback to this phenomenon. Mr Baud is convinced that the Ukrainian command itself believed a story invented by Western propaganda, which ultimately led to catastrophic strategic errors due to the underestimation of the Russian army’s capabilities.
“The paradox of this situation is that by accentuating Russia’s weakness in all possible sources […] there was an effect that was undoubtedly not foreseen by those who thought up these narratives. The Ukrainians began to draw inspiration from these narratives. […] This led to an underestimation of Russia’s capabilities”.
