Ignorance Is Not Strength
Widely accepted false narratives on Russia and the Ukraine War are driving the U.S. and Western Europe toward dangerously expanded war, further destruction of Ukraine, and eroded support for Trump and Republican majorities in Congress.
The Communist Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991, and most of it became the Russian Federation. Boris Yeltsin became President of the Russian Federation in June 1991 with 54 percent of the vote against just over 40 percent for the Communist candidate. He won again with 54 percent in 1996 with the Communist candidate rounding up to 41 percent. Russian (and Ukrainian) elections have a “none of the above” choice on the ballot. Yeltsin ran as an independent, but was generally aligned with right-of-center and liberal free-market economy reform supporters. In August 1999, Yeltsin replaced his prime minister, and appointed Vladimir Putin his Prime Minister and heir apparent. Putin was even more inclined to free-market economic and political reform than Yeltsin. Yeltsin resigned as president on December 31, 1999, and appointed Putin his interim successor. Putin was elected President of Russia in May 2000 with just over 53 percent of the vote. The Communist candidate received just 29.5 percent of the vote. Boris Yeltsin died in 2007.
In 2004, Putin received 71 percent of the vote against less than 14 percent for the Communist candidate. Medvedev, Putin’s Prime Minister, received just over 70 percent of the vote in the presidential election of 2008 against 18 percent for the Communists. Putin returned to the presidency with 64 percent of the vote in 2012 with the Communist candidate at 18 percent. In 2018, Putin was elected with 77 percent of the vote with the Communist candidate receiving less than 12 percent. However, the Communists received 19 percent in the Duma and legislative elections in 2021.
Since Vladimir Putin first became President in 2000, Russian GDP adjusted for purchasing price parity (PPP) has increased 7.13-fold (2025). Russia has now displaced Germany as the fourth largest world economy measured by GDP (PPP), much more accurate than unadjusted nominal GDP. Russian government debt was 36 percent of GDP in 2024, compared to 123 percent for the U.S. in 2025. Russia’s GDP growth was 4.1 percent in 2024, perhaps the highest in Europe. Unemployment was 2.6 percent in April 2024. The Russian annual government budget is consistently close to government income. Estimated inflation for 2025 is at 5.9 percent due to increased military production. It is no wonder Putin’s approval ratings have been over 80 percent for several years. Seventy-five percent of Russians support the war in Ukraine, and about 13 percent oppose it. By the way, the modern Russian Communist Party accepts a mixture of overall state control and economic freedom at lower levels. It avoids meddling in social issues.
And Yet, in early March 2022, two weeks after the Russians intruded into Ukraine on February 24, 2024, an Economist/UGov poll showed 52 percent of U.S. REPUBLICAN voters believed Russia is a Communist Country.
About 44 percent of Democrats believed Russia was a Communist country. Another 10 percent of Democrats believed Russia was a socialist country. Overall 42 percent of Americans believed Russia was a Communist country. Apparently independent voters are a bit better informed.
In the Russian 2024 elections, Putin received over 88 percent of the vote, and the Communist candidate received only 4.37 percent!
U.S. and UK propaganda had driven Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s approval rating in the United States to 70 percent favorable and only 11 percent unfavorable. U.S Government, CIA, British MI6, and Hillary Clinton propaganda had driven Putin’s American favorability into the “Hitler Category” beginning in 2007 and continuing through 2025.
The Newsweek article that revealed these polls on March 3, 2022, mentioned the ridiculous ignorance of the modern Russian Federation shown by statements of one Republican Senator and one Democrat Senator. I believe the Republican caught up on his history quicky; judging from recent concerns he has vented about the largely unaccountable Congressional spending of $175 billion on what has become a dangerous U.S. and NATO instigated proxy war on Russia, dating at least since 2014.
The Ukraine War started long before the so-called “unprovoked” Russian “invasion” of Ukraine by Russian forces on February 24, 2022. In 2008, under the American leadership of President George W. Bush and VP Dick Chaney, NATO began planning to make Ukraine a bulwark of anti-Russian influence within close striking range of important Russian defense systems. This broke a well-documented promise relating to the reunification of Germany in October 1990 given to Russian President Mikael Gorbachev during early 1990 negotiations that NATO not move “one inch” further to the East. Russian-American tensions increased in 2004 and 2005 during the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine elections, in which American and CIA involvement helped overturn the election of pro-neutral Viktor Yanukovych as President of Ukraine. Yanukovych, however, was elected President of Ukraine in 2010, with 49.55 percent to 45.03 percent for Yulia Tymoshenko, with 4.4 percent voting “against all” and a few invalid votes.
A crucial thing to know here is that about 38 percent of the population of Ukraine at that time were Russian speakers of Russian or mixed Ukrainian and Russian ancestry. Nine Oblasts or states located in southern and eastern Ukraine are 60 percent or more Russian and voted accordingly. The most Russian oblasts were the two known as the Donbas republics; Donetsk (90%) and Lugansk (89%), and Crimea (79%) and Odessa (74%).
Another crucial factor in the Donbas conflict is that the Donbas and bordering Russian-speaking Oblasts contain a disproportionate share of the coal, iron, energy, and important manufacturing metals in Ukraine. The Donbas is particularly rich in lithium.
In February 2014, the violent (80 plus killed) revolutionary coup, the so-called ” Maidan Revolution of Dignity,” overthrew Yanukovych and replaced him with a pro-American Prime Minister and Cabinet. This coup was authorized by President Barack Obama and managed by VP Joe Biden, Asst. Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, Biden’s later Defense Advisor, Jake Sullivan, and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. The U.S. spent $5 billion largely through USAID to make Ukraine into an anti-Russian bulwark. The CIA, British MI6, and George Soros organizations were actively involved in supporting and funding the coup. Its main Ukrainian supporters were from violence prone extreme nationalists whose predecessors supported and allied with the Nazis during World War II. These included the “Right Sector,” Svoboda (Freedom Party), and the terrorist Azov Battalion, later Azov Brigade, and other followers of Nazi Ukrainian leader, Stepan Bandera.
Petro Poroshenko was elected President in May 2014. On taking office in June, he undertook a program of ethnic cleansing against the 38 percent Russian minority. This caused a civil war in which 14,000 were killed, including thousands of Russian-ethnic civilians.
Crimea, including the major Russian Black Sea Naval Base at Sevastopol, which had been arbitrarily transferred to the Ukrainian SSR from the Russian SSR by Premier Nikita Khrushchev in 1955, seceded and became part of the Russian Federation. It had been Russian from 1783 to 1955. Donetsk and Lugansk wanted to join Russia, but Putin wanted them to stay in Ukraine as a pro-Russian voting bloc. They instead became independent Donbas republics.
The Minsk II Agreement in February 2015 agreed on 12 points of which the most important were a cease fire, changes in the Ukrainian Constitution to give Russian ethnics equal rights and cultural and language recognition, and arrangement for the Donbas republics to have autonomy within Ukraine. This agreement was approved by UN Resolution and was to be supported by France and Germany. It was later admitted by French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Minsk Agreement was never meant to be implemented but was merely a delaying tactic to build up the Ukrainian Army, which was near defeat by Donbas militia forces in 2015. Meanwhile the U.S. and UK built the Ukrainian Army into the second largest and perhaps best equipped and trained in European NATO.
In March 2021, Ukrainian President Zelensky publicly declared that he intended to take back the Donbas republics and Crimea by force.
The U.S. plan, as documented by two Rand Corporation papers in April 2019, was to draw Russia into conflict with Ukraine and then crush the Russian economy with sanctions, resulting, in Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, regime change against Putin, and permanently weakening Russia as a military, economic, and political power, even breaking it up into resource exploitable parts.
By February 2022, the Ukrainian Army was maneuvering toward Donetsk, and Ukrainian Army artillery, which had been bombarding civilian areas of Donetsk and other Donbas cities all along, increased their bombardment ten-fold.
Former Swiss Chief of Strategic Intelligence, Col. Jacques Baud, believes protecting the Russian ethnic population of the Donbas is what actually precipitated the Russian intrusion into Ukraine on February 24, 2022.
The NATO issue and the possibility of Ukrainian missiles pointed at Moscow and Russian defense are extremely important, but the mistreatment of Russian ethnics in Ukraine became an urgent issue to the Russian people, the Russian Duma, and thus to Putin.
The U.S. Rand Corporation Plan did not work. In fact, the Rand Corporation warned against its improbability of success and the negative consequences for U.S. respect and prestige around the world. After all, it was a sacrifice of Ukrainian lives to achieve American hegemonic objectives.
Most casualty estimates from the from Western sources reflect ridiculously exaggerated Ukrainian propaganda. One of the least exaggerated, however, although it comes from strongly pro-Ukrainian sources—Mediazona and the BBC—according to Col. Baud, estimated 105,000 Russian military dead as of May 27. To this could be added 23,000 Donbas militia dead for a total of 128,000. Although the Ukrainian General Staff insists it has only lost 80,000 killed, a Ukrainian source outside the reach of Ukrainian General Staff control and misinformation has a still fairly conservative objective estimate that Ukraine has lost over 750,000 soldiers killed. Col. Douglas Macgregor’s sources are estimating Ukrainian military dead to be between 1.2 to 1.4 million. The Russians have been running an attrition strategy, and they have vast superiority in almost every factor of artillery, air defense, offensive air, and missiles. Only in drones are the Ukrainians near parity with the Russians. Moreover, Ukrainian forces are dwindling and recruitment is forced and paltry, while Russian volunteers are signing up at more than 35,000 per month. Furthermore, the Russians are now advancing, and serious gaps are developing in Ukrainian defenses. Based on the vast Russian superiority in firepower and battlefield retrieval of wounded, I believe Russian military dead may be overestimated as much as 25 percent and Ukrainian military dead underestimated as much as 25 percent. According to United Nations sources, Ukrainian civilian dead is comparatively low at just over 13,000, indicating the Russians are making a deliberate effort to avoid civilian casualties. That cannot be said for the Ukrainian Army, which has often targeted civilians with artillery and drones.
But back to the main point, how do the American people and the political leaders seem to know so little about Russia, Ukraine, and the realities of the war, especially as it is being fought on the ground.
One issue is that American education, while the most expensive in the world, is falling behind many European and Asian nations. According to World Population Review, the 2022 student assessment scores for the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) indicated China had the second highest overall and math score and the third highest science score of 81 tested countries. The United States did not do badly but showed some weakness in math. The U.S. ranked 18th overall and 16th in science but 34th in math. The Russian Federation did not participate but is known for its rigorous engineering and science standards in secondary and higher education institutions.
As a former USAF intelligence officer, I listen carefully to members of Congress, President Trump, his Cabinet officials, and high ranking Defense officials on military, diplomatic, and international relations.
My sources are not top secret; they are open to anyone who can read, listen, or watch. Unfortunately, I have a strong impression that President Ttump, Congress, and many key cabinet and staff members are often being “insufficiently” briefed by the CIA and perhaps some other intelligence agencies. I have a fear that Trump is being deceived to advance the Neocon/Deepstate narrative that Russia is evil and Putin is Hitler. This is especially apparent when they seem to be defending a false narrative rather than looking at the facts and exercising reasonable analysis, perception, and judgement. So far I have great respect for Tulsi Gabbard, Steven Witkoff, and several others. I have grave reservations about some others and what influence they have on Trump that might drag us into a senseless, costly, and humiliating conflict with Russia and destroy Ukraine and its people in its wake. Some are dangerously close to the immoral principle of “fighting to the last Ukrainian” to supposedly advance our interests.
I think we must admit we have badly underestimated the Russians both militarily and economically. We also have to admit that our weapons capabilities are by no means clearly superior to those of the Russians and that our industrial capacity is inadequate at present to sustain a major war on another continent. For a shocking treatise on U.S. Defense and economic weaknesses, read “New Thinking Needed on National Defense,” by Stephen Bryen in the March/April 2025 issue of Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.
Readers should also be aware that the mainstream media and internet is filled with avid paid-defenders of politically entrenched false narratives connected to special political, economic, and foreign policy agendas.
One way of resolving the Ukraine-Russia issues is by an internationally monitored referendum in each Ukrainian Oblast. Let the people decide by a 50 percent plus one majority if they want to be part of Ukraine, Russia, Poland, Hungary, Rumania or whatever. Nobody has to die. Peace can bless all.
Beyond that, we must realize that our objective of destroying Russia using up the lifeblood of generations of Ukrainian men and many women is immoral folly. Trump should cut military and intelligence aid to the corrupt Ukrainian regime immediately and withdraw all American military and CIA personnel immediately. Delaying an end to Project Ukraine will only mean the death of more Ukrainian soldiers and endangering any prospects for Ukrainian recovery and future posterity.
Trump will benefit himself and America by doing the right thing rather than something that can be sold as a political win, but might actually destroy the many good things he has already accomplished or might accomplish in the future. Going for a phony political win might actually bring the whole nation down and the Republican Party with it.
“My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge.”—Hoseah 4:6.
Mike Scruggs is the author of two books: The Un-Civil War: Shattering the Historical Myths; and Lessons from the Vietnam War: Truths the Media Never Told You, and over 600 articles on military history, national security, intelligent design, genealogical genetics, immigration, current political affairs, Islam, and the Middle East. 
