Stephen Kinzer Book Claims US Policy Provoked Ukraine War
Historian Stephen Kinzer argues in his new book that decades of US strategy and covert operations turned Ukraine into a tool against Russia.
Historian and author Stephen Kinzer released a book titled 'Boiling Point: How America Brought War to Ukraine,' which argues that the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine was not unprovoked. Kinzer contends that the United States spent 75 years pursuing a strategy to cultivate Ukrainian nationalism to use the country as a battering ram against Russia, a process he says began with Cold War-era covert operations by the Central Intelligence Agency.
Kinzer asserts that the conflict could have been avoided if the United States had publicly declared that Ukraine would not join NATO, suggesting instead a neutral status modeled after Austria. He claims that U.S. foreign policy in the region was distorted by officials with Eastern European family backgrounds who used American power to pursue personal or ancestral vengeance against Russia.
According to the book, the war is a result of a great-power rivalry that has devastated Ukraine to serve the goal of weakening Russia. Kinzer describes Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a former TV personality caught between Russian aggression and pressure from the United States.
