Why Mearsheimer Falsifies the History of Ukraine’s War

14 June 2026, by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

On June 14th, the University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer alleged twice that the war in Ukraine started when Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022 — which allegation is crucial to America’s rulers because it is the basis for the U.S. Government’s allegation that Russia is the aggressor in this war.

In an interview on June 13th by the Norwegian Professor Glenn Diesen, Mearsheimer said at 10:00, “And then the Ukraine war breaks out in February of 2022.” (Note the passive tense there; but, he quickly made clear that Russia was the aggressor — that Russia had started the war in Ukraine.)

At 13:13 he then said, “the war in Ukraine started, of course, it started February 24th, 2022,” and this cements his view that when Russia invaded Ukraine on that date, Russia was thereby the aggressor in this war. He twice implied that Russia had started it. But then he said at 13:29, “It seems very clear to me that what we, the West, was interested in doing [prior to that Russian invasion] was knocking Russia out of the ranks of the great powers”; and, at 14:05, “I thought at the time that this was an extremely dangerous way of thinking about how to deal with the Russians. Again, you’re threatening the survival of a country that has many, many nuclear weapons”; so, he actually knew that it wasn’t JUST a ‘great powers’ contest; this war in Ukraine, he now implicitly acknowledged, without actually SAYING it, is EXISTENTIAL for Russia — essential for Russia — as being an independent nation; America was — he now implicitly, though NOT explicitly, said — the aggressor in this entire matter (using Ukraine as its proxy front); he simply had knowingly lied to say “the war in Ukraine started, of course, it started February 24th, 2022”). (That invasion started on that date; but did America’s invasion of Nazi-occupied Europe beginning on June 6, 1944 — D-Day — START America’s war against Germany in WW2? Was America the AGGRESSOR in that war (WW2)? No. America did not become the aggressor-nation it now is, until 25 July 1945.)

The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said — NOT in 2022 as is alleged by the U.S.-Government.

Now, here will be the proof, which is contained in the links within, and the links within the articles that are here linked to within, the following detailed historical account of the war in Ukraine — it is a war which DID NOT EXIST AT ALL UNTIL the American Government’s long-planned-in-advance very bloody coup in Ukraine during 20-27 February 2014, which REPLACED the till-then internationally NEUTRALIST Ukrainian Government, and imposed an entirely illegitimate rabidly anti-Russian regime in the one nation that has the nearest of all borders to The Kremlin — Ukraine, a mere 5 minutes of missile-flying-time away by a U.S. missile nuking (from Ukraine) Russia’s central command and thus capturing Russia; this, the start of the war in Ukraine, was PURELY American aggression, and it started years before 2022:

This war was started in 2014 by the U.S. against Russia; it is the U.S. regime’s proxy-war to capture Russia — NOT a war started by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, such as the liars allege — it was actually started in February 2014 by a U.S. coup which replaced the democratically elected and neutralist Ukrainian President, with a U.S. selected and rabidly anti-Russian leader, who immediately imposed an ethnic-cleansing program to get rid of the residents (see the video here) in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President. This was being done by the U.S.-imposed regime in order to make it into a ‘democracy’ whose remaining voters would be satisfied to select from ONLY rabidly anti-Russian candidates for public offices. Russia responded militarily on 24 February 2022, in order to prevent Ukraine from allowing the U.S. to place a missile there a mere 317 miles or five minutes of missile-flying-time away from The Kremlin and thus too brief for Russia to respond before its central command would already be beheaded by America’s nuclear strike. (As I headlined on 28 October 2022, “NATO Wants To Place Nuclear Missiles On Finland’s Russian Border — Finland Says Yes”. The U.S. had demanded this, especially because it will place American nuclear missiles far nearer to The Kremlin than at present, only 507 miles away — not as close as Ukraine, but the closest yet.)

Ukraine was neutral between Russia and America until Obama’s brilliantly executed Ukrainian coup, which his Administration started planning by no later than June 2011, culminated successfully in February 2014 and promptly appointed a rabid anti-Russian to impose in regions that rejected the new anti-Russian U.S.-controlled goverment, an “Anti-Terrorist Operation”, to kill protesters, and, ultimately, to terrorize the residents in those regions in order to kill as many of them as possible and to force the others to flee into Russia so that when elections would be held, pro-Russian voters would no longer be in the electorate. Ukraine’s Obama-imposed government did this in order to be no mere interim government but a permanent ‘democratically elected’ U.S.-controlled government of Ukraine.

For this reason, and as a part of Obama’s plan, the U.S. Government had engaged the Gallup polling organization, both  before  and  after  the  coup, in order to poll Ukrainians, and especially ones who lived in its Crimean independent republic (where Russia has had its main naval base ever since 1783), regarding their views on U.S., Russia, NATO, and the EU; and they found that, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but that this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant to the coup. However, this was not really new information. During 2003-2009, only around 20% of Ukrainians had wanted NATO membership, while around 55% opposed it. In 2010, Gallup found that whereas 17% of Ukrainians considered NATO to mean “protection of your country,” 40% said it’s “a threat to your country.” Ukrainians predominantly saw NATO as an enemy, not a friend. But after Obama’s February 2014 Ukrainian coup, “Ukraine’s NATO membership would get 53.4% of the votes, one third of Ukrainians (33.6%) would oppose it.” However, afterward, the support averaged around 45% — still over twice as high as had been the case prior to the coup.

Furthermore, this opposition to Ukraine joining NATO wasn’t merely Ukrainian public opinion before Obama’s 2014 coup: Ukraine’s 16 July 1990 basic law and declaration of independence from the Soviet Union swore that Ukraine would NEVER join ANY “military bloc”. Of course, that commitment by the newly independent nation of Ukraine was simply ignored by the Obama-stooge regime, up till the present day.

In other words: what Obama did was generally successful: it grabbed Ukraine, or most of it, and it changed Ukrainians’ minds regarding America and Russia. But only after the subsequent passage of time did the American billionaires’ neoconservative heart become successfully grafted into the Ukrainian nation so as to make Ukraine a viable place to position U.S. nuclear missiles against Moscow (which is the U.S. Government’s goal there). Furthermore: America’s rulers also needed to do some work upon U.S. public opinion. Not until February of 2014 — the time of Obama’s coup — did more than 15% of the American public have a “very unfavorable” view of Russia. (Right before Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that figure had already risen to 42%. America’s press — and academia or public-policy ‘experts’ — have been very effective at managing public opinion, for the benefit of America’s billionaires, such as the controlling owners of firms like Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil.)

The reason why Mearsheimer deceived about this is that in order to achieve or maintain influence in America’s dictatorship by-and-for America’s billionaires — the U.S. Deep State — this is necessary to do. The corruption comes from the top down. Everyone has to do the job one is being paid to do.

I presented more-detailed documentation of this history in my 15 August 2025 “Documentation that U.S. and EU Support Ukraine’s Nazis”, which includes the Minsk agreements, and the proposals by Russia for a promise by NATO not to accept Ukraine as a member.

There was also another guest interviewed on June 13th by Professor Diesen in that same video. It was the prominent Russian Professor Sergey Karaganov. On 14 July 2023, Russia’s RT News had published my response to him, “Amid talk of a preemptive nuclear strike on NATO from Russia, why doesn’t Moscow try this instead? The country should engage NATO members with proposals for bilateral agreements, which will also help them to regain sovereignty”, my response against Karaganov’s proposal that the next major step up in Russia’s escalation of this war in defense of Russia should be nuclear. He, yet again, is now advocating for Russia to go nuclear against Europe. My proposal for Russia to make these treaty-offers prior to any such escalation, failed to provoke any response from Karaganov or anyone else in Russia in 2023. But I still believe that Putin should try it before escalating this war to the nuclear level of conflict. Karaganov even said, to Diesen, at 18:18, “If we use them [nukes], we would win the war.” But the reality is instead that if this war escalates to the nuclear level, the outcome would be not win-lose, but lose-lose for both sides, because within the first two years of the nuclear explosions, half of all humans will already have died-off from it. Neither in the U.S. empire, nor in Russia, is this reality being publicly discussed. Every rational person has reason to be severely concerned about this failure. It is a failure not only by governments, but by academics, and by billionaires. It is an enormous failure by ‘the experts’.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.