Last week, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, during a set of whirlwind meetings in several European NATO countries, warned against Russian propaganda programs he accused of spreading “misinformation and disinformation” about US intentions to escalate the conflict by allowing Ukraine’s military to use longer-range US missiles to strike targets as much as 200 miles inside of Russia — something that the Biden administration had since the start of that war had not allowed, correctly fearing that it could lead to a larger and possibly nuclear war.

Blinken’s lie, though, was that at the time he was accusing Russia of dishonesty, he himself knew that the decision had already been made by President Biden to do exactly that: authorize Ukraine to strike Soviet air bases, missile launch sites, troop concentrations and staging areas well inside the Russia’s borders using missiles supplied by the US.

This inconvenient truth was exposed by Politico, which ran a story on May 30th disclosing the secret Biden decision, which followed intense lobbying of the president by US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Sec. Blinken himself, as well as by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and various Ukrainian military leaders.

From the beginning of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over two years ago, Biden had made it clear that no US troops would be sent to fight for Ukraine, and no US weapons would be used against Russian territory. Nothing would be done that could risk turning the conflict into a head-to-head battle between US and Russian forces, because it was felt (correctly!) that such a situation could quickly lead to the use of nuclear weapons.

What changed to make Biden suddenly stop worrying about taking the first steps up what Pentagon strategists have, since the early days of the nuclear era in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, referred to as the “nuclear ladder” of tit-for-tat nuclear escalation?

Clearly it was the fact that Ukraine has begun losing the war. It’s out of ammunition, out of anti-aircraft missiles, short of troops, is facing a mass flight of draft-age men from the country’s recently expanded conscription efforts, and it is loosing ground around........

© Eurasia Review