The organization, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), issued an Memorandum to the Candidates for U.S. Vice President published in Consortium News today, advising the two candidates participating on Oct. 1 in the debate for Vice President not to use “facts” about the Ukraine war that have been thoroughly disproven many years ago. The title of the VIPS Memorandum is, “VIPS Memo: Advice to U.S. Vice Presidential Candidates.”
The first fake claim addressed by the VIPS memo is that Russia’s military moves against Ukraine were “unprovoked,” which was disproved by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, and the current CIA director William Burns. Soltenberg, speaking at the European Parliament on Oct. 7, 2023 said: “He [Putin] wanted us never to enlarge NATO…. We rejected that…. So he went to war to prevent more NATO.” Also as Ambassador to Germany William Burns reported in an embassy cable to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a discussion that he had with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Feb. 1, 2008, at which Lavrov warned that “Russia would be provoked if NATO invited Ukraine to become a member.”
The VIPS memo also details the Feb. 9, 1990 promise by Secretary of State James Baker to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that in return for Moscow accepting the reunification of Germany, the U.S. would not further expand NATO “one inch eastward.” However, on April 3, 2008, President George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were able to press other NATO members to agree in a NATO Summit Declaration that Ukraine “will become a member of NATO.” Since the broken promise to Gorbachev, NATO has moved East and more than doubled in size.
The next subject addressed in the VIPS memo was the Feb. 22, 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine, in which the U.S. helped to remove from power the duly elected President Viktor Yanukovych and install an unelected, fascist government that was hostile to Russia and which sought NATO membership. The U.S. gave official recognition to the usurper government in record time.
A major flashpoint in this conflict is Crimea which is vital to Russia as its only warm water naval base, but in 1954, Khrushchev transferred Crimea to fellow Soviet republic, Ukraine. However, when the U.S.S.R. broke up, Russia could not tolerate the loss of Crimea and would certainly not allow it to be delivered to NATO. Crimean citizens held a referendum and overwhelmingly voted to be rejoined to Russia, and Russia obliged. U.S. Senator John McCain ignored the vote and said that it was merely a Putin land-grab. On July 1, 2015, a VIPS member responded in a letter to the editor in the Washington Post, detailing how McCain and also the Post failed to tell the truth about the coup and the drive for NATO membership in Ukraine.
VIPS’s final point made was the false claim by some, including President Biden in the debate with Trump on June 27, in which Biden said that Putin “wants all of Ukraine. … Do you think he’ll stop? … What do you think happens to Poland and other places?” The VIPS Memo corrects these false claims by pointing out that in the Russia-Ukraine March 2022 negotiations in Istanbul, after seven weeks of fighting, Putin did stop, and offered peace when Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy agreed to forswear NATO membership. Under the agreement Ukraine could join the European Union and even have security agreements, but it could not join NATO. The issue of Crimea would be decided later. Peace was at hand and both sides agreed to the deal. However, at the last minute, then-British Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew into Kyiv and forced Ukraine to back out of the deal (with some help from the State Department’s Victoria Nuland).
The VIPS statement concludes that any truthful debate must honor these facts and if either candidate wants any further information that the VIPS would be glad to help. The statement is signed by 16 former intelligence officers from multiple agencies.
