The real reason why Russia invaded Ukraine
The Ukraine War was 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 in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President.
The History of Ukraine’s War, as I State and Document It, vs. As Russia’s Government States It
Eric Zuesse (blogs at https://theduran.com/author/eric-zuesse/)
I shall here state and — by means of links to my sources — document, the actual history of the war in Ukraine, and then will present the Russian version of this history, as that was stated at the U.N. Security Council on July 16th by Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
The most important difference between these two historical accounts is that whereas mine attributes Russia’s 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, to Russia’s main reason for the invasion being Russia’s need to prevent the U.S. Government from achieving its long-held dream of placing its nuclear missiles a mere 317 miles away (five minutes of missile-flying time away) from The Kremlin (since only Ukraine is even nearly that close to the Kremlin); Russia’s instead attributes its 24 February 2022 invasion of Ukraine to Russia’s main reason for the invasion (“Special Military Operation”) being Russia’s desire to protect the residents in the breakaway far-eastern former Donbass region of Ukraine (which by then had separated itself from Ukraine), to protect them from the military attacks that ever since April 2014 Ukraine’s government was making against the residents there.
Did Russia do it to protect itself, or to protect the Donbassers?
(I note here that buried in the middle of the Russian explanation is the statement that, “A special military operation was launched to eliminate threats to Russia’s security and protect people who feel that they are part of Russian culture and live on lands that were settled by their ancestors for centuries, and to save them from legislative and physical extermination.” However, though Lavrov mentions first there the “eliminate threats to Russia’s security,” no clear amplification is provided in his speech as to what that phrase is actually referring to. And this has been the way all official Russian explanations of the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion have been.
Furthermore, I am not disagreeing with anything that was said in the Russian presentation; I believe all of it to be true. But I do think that its primary emphasis upon the admirable but nonetheless secondary reason for the 24 February 2024 invasion — to protect the residents in Donbass — tends to give a distorted view of why Russia invaded, and is also otherwise entirely unconstructive. Moreover, I believe that the true primary reason for that invasion would be MUCH more persuasive to people in The West — and even elsewhere — than a continuation of reliance upon the secondary reason for that invasion would be.)
Any reader-comments about these two contrasting historical accounts — these very different attributions of what Russia’s main reason was for the 24 February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine — will be appreciated.
MY ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY:
The war in Ukraine started in 2014, as both NATO’s Stoltenberg and Ukraine’s Zelensky have said. It was 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 in the regions that had voted overwhelmingly for the overthrown President.
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 government 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.
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, generally, Ukrainians were far more pro-Russia than pro-U.S., pro-NATO, or pro-EU, but this was especially the case in Crimea; so, America’s Government knew that Crimeans would be especially resistant. 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.
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, 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.)
Then came the Minsk Agreements (#1 & #2, with #2 being the final version, which is shown here, as a U.N. Security Council Resolution), between Ukraine and the separatist region in its far east, and which the U.S. Government refused to participate in, but the U.S.-installed Ukrainian government (then under the oligarch Petro Poroshenko) signed it in order to have a chance of Ukraine’s gaining EU membership, but never complied with any of it; and, so, the war continued); and, then, finally, as the Ukrainian government (now under Volodmyr Zelensky) was greatly intensifying its shelling of the break-away far-eastern region, Russia presented, to both the U.S. Government and its NATO military alliance against Russia, two proposed agreements for negotiation (one to U.S., the other to NATO), but neither the U.S. nor its NATO agreed to negotiate. The key portions of the two 17 December 2021 proposed Agreements, with both the U.S. and with its NATO, were, in regards to NATO:
Article 1
The Parties shall guide in their relations by the principles of cooperation, equal and indivisible security. They shall not strengthen their security individually, within international organizations, military alliances or coalitions at the expense of the security of other Parties. …
Article 4
The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties.
Article 5
The Parties shall not deploy land-based intermediate- and short-range missiles in areas allowing them to reach the territory of the other Parties.
Article 6
All member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization commit themselves to refrain from any further enlargement of NATO, including the accession of Ukraine as well as other States.
And, in regards to the U.S.:
Article 2
The Parties shall seek to ensure that all international organizations, military alliances and coalitions in which at least one of the Parties is taking part adhere to the principles contained in the Charter of the United Nations.
Article 3
The Parties shall not use the territories of other States with a view to preparing or carrying out an armed attack against the other Party or other actions affecting core security interests of the other Party.
Article 4
The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.
Any reader here can easily click onto the respective link to either proposed Agreement, in order to read that entire document, so as to evaluate whether or not all of its proposed provisions are acceptable and reasonable. What was proposed by Russia in each of the two was only a proposal, and the other side (the U.S. side) in each of the two instances, was therefore able to pick and choose amongst those proposed provisions, which ones were accepted, and to negotiate regarding any of the others; but, instead, the U.S. side simply rejected all of them.
On 7 January 2022, the Associated Press (AP) headlined “US, NATO rule out halt to expansion, reject Russian demands”, and reported:
Washington and NATO have formally rejected Russia’s key demands for assurances that the US-led military bloc will not expand closer towards its borders, leaked correspondence reportedly shows.
According to documents seen by Spanish daily El Pais and published on Wednesday morning, Moscow’s calls for a written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted as a member of NATO were dismissed following several rounds of talks between Russian and Western diplomats. …
The US-led bloc denied that it posed a threat to Russia. …
The US similarly rejected the demand that NATO does not expand even closer to Russia’s borders. “The United States continues to firmly support NATO’s Open Door Policy.”
NATO-U.S. was by now clearly determined to get Ukraine into NATO and to place its nukes so near to The Kremlin as to constitute, like a checkmate in chess, a forced defeat of Russia, a capture of its central command. This was, but in reverse, the situation that America’s President JFK had faced with regard to the Soviet Union in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, when the U.S. would have invaded Cuba if Khrushchev wouldn’t agree to a mutually acceptable settlement — which he did, and so WW3 was averted on that occasion. But whereas Khrushchev was reasonable, Biden is not; and, so, we again stand at the brink of WW3, but this time with a truly evil head-of-state (Biden — no better than Obama), who might even be willing to go beyond that brink in order to become able to achieve world-conquest.
Russia did what it had to do: it invaded Ukraine, on 24 February 2022.
RUSSIA’S ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY:
https://translated.turbopages.org/proxy_u/ru-en.en.e024f989-66992c3b-fe2efca0-74722d776562/https/mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/news/1962040/
16.07.2024 18:43
Statement by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov at the UN Security Council meeting on Multilateral Cooperation for a More Just, Democratic and Sustainable World Order, New York, July 16, 2024
I would like to extend a warm welcome to the distinguished high representatives present in the Security Council Chamber. Their participation in today’s meeting confirms the importance of the topic under discussion. In accordance with rule 37 of the Council’s provisional legal procedures, I invite the representatives of Australia, Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Brazil, Cambodia, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Egypt, Ghana, Guatemala, Hungary, India, Indonesia, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and Viet Nam to participate in the meeting. Maldives, Morocco, Nepal, Nicaragua, United Arab Emirates, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Syrian Arab Republic, Thailand, Timor-Leste, Turkey, Uganda, Chile, Ethiopia and South Africa.
In accordance with rule 39 of the Council’s provisional legal procedures, I invite His Excellency S. Lambrinidis, Head of the delegation of the European Union to the United Nations, to participate in this meeting.
The UN Security Council will now begin its consideration of agenda item 2. I would like to draw the attention of the Council members to document S/2024/537 – Letter dated 9 July 2024 from the Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations Guterres, transmitting a concept note on the item under consideration.
Dear Ladies and Gentlemen,
Your Excellency,
Today, the very foundations of the international legal order – strategic stability and the UN-centered system of world politics – are being tested for their strength. It is impossible to resolve the multiplying conflicts unless we understand their root causes and restore faith in our ability to join forces for the common good and justice for all.
Let’s be frank: not all the States represented in this Hall recognize the key principle of the UN Charter: the sovereign equality of all States. The United States has long declared its own exclusivity through the mouths of its presidents. This concerns Washington’s attitude towards its allies, who are required to obey unquestioningly, even to the detriment of their national interests.
Rule, America! This is the essence of the notorious “rules – based order” – a direct threat to multilateralism and international peace.
The most important components of international law – the UN Charter and the decisions of our Council – are interpreted by the “collective West” in a perverse and selective way, depending on what attitude came from the White House. And many Security Council resolutions are ignored altogether. Among them are resolution 2202, which approved the Minsk Agreements on Ukraine, and resolution 1031, which approved the Dayton Agreement on Peace in BiH on the basis of the principle of equal rights of three state-forming peoples and two entities. You can talk endlessly about sabotage of resolutions on the Middle East – what is the value of A. Blinken’s statement in an interview with CNN in February 2021 in response to a question about what he thinks about the decision of the previous US administration to recognize Israel’s ownership of the Syrian Golan Heights. If anyone doesn’t remember, I’ll refresh your memory. In response to this question, the Secretary of State said: “Leaving aside the question of legality, from a practical point of view, the Golan is very important for ensuring Israel’s security.” And this is despite the fact that UN Security Council Resolution 497 of 1981, as we all know very well, which no one has canceled, qualifies Israel’s illegal annexation of the Golan Heights. But, according to these “rules”, it is necessary-to quote A. Blinken – “to leave aside the question of legality”. And, of course, the statement of the US Permanent Representative that resolution 2728, adopted on March 25 this year, demanding an immediate cease-fire in the Gaza Strip, “is not legally binding” is fresh in everyone’s memory. In other words, American “rules” are more important than Article 25 of the UN Charter.
In the last century, J. R. R. Tolkien, Orwell, in Animal Farm, already foresaw the essence of “rule-based order”: “all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.” If you do the will of the hegemon, you are allowed to do anything. And if you dare and start defending your national interests, you will be declared an outcast and subject to sanctions.
Washington’s hegemonic policy has not changed for decades. Without exception, all Euro-Atlantic security schemes were based on ensuring US dominance, including subjugating Europe and “containing” Russia. The main role was assigned to NATO, which eventually “crushed” the European Union, which was supposedly created for Europeans. The OSCE structures were shamelessly privatized in gross violation of the Helsinki Final Act.
The reckless expansion of NATO, despite repeated warnings from Moscow over the years, has also triggered the Ukrainian crisis, starting with the coup d’etat organized by Washington in February 2014 to establish full control over Ukraine in order to prepare an offensive against Russia with the help of the neo-Nazi regime brought to power. When P. A. Poroshenko and then V. A. Zelensky waged a war against their own citizens in the Donbas, legally destroyed Russian education, Russian culture, Russian media and the Russian language in general, banned the UOC [Ukrainian Orthodox Church], no one in the West noticed this, did not demand that their wards in Kiev “observe decency”, do not violate international conventions on the rights of national minorities, and the Constitution of Ukraine itself, which requires that these rights be respected. A special military operation was launched to eliminate threats to Russia’s security and protect people who feel that they are part of Russian culture and live on lands that were settled by their ancestors for centuries, and to save them from legislative and physical extermination.
It is significant that even now, when numerous initiatives are being put forward for the Ukrainian settlement, few people remember Kiev’s violation of human rights and national minorities. Only recently did the EU documents on the start of negotiations on Ukraine’s accession formulate a corresponding requirement, mainly due to the principled and persistent position of Hungary. However, the real possibilities and desire of Brussels to influence the Kiev regime are questionable.
We call on all those who show a sincere interest in overcoming the crisis in Ukraine to take into account in their proposals the key issue of the rights of all national minorities without exception. Its silence devalues peaceful initiatives, and V. A. Zelensky’s racist policy actually gets approval. It is characteristic that in 2014 (ten years ago) V. A. Zelensky said: “If in the East of Ukraine and in Crimea people want to speak Russian-let go, leave them alone, legally let them speak Russian. The language will never divide our native country.” Since then, Washington has successfully re-educated him, and already in 2021, Vladimir Zelensky in an interview demanded that those who feel involved in Russian culture should go to Russia for the sake of the future of their children and grandchildren.
I appeal to the masters of the Ukrainian regime: force them to comply with Article 1.3 of the UN Charter, which guarantees the fundamental rights and freedoms of all people “without distinction between race, gender, language or religion.”
Dear colleagues,
The North Atlantic Alliance is no longer satisfied with the war that it unleashed against Russia at the hands of the illegal authorities in Kiev, and the entire OSCE space is not enough for it. Having almost completely destroyed the fundamental agreements on arms control, the United States continues to escalate the confrontation. The other day, at a summit in Washington, the leaders of the alliance countries confirmed their claims to a dominant role not only in the Euro-Atlantic region, but also in the Asia-Pacific region. It is declared that NATO is still guided by the task of protecting the territory of its members, but for this, they say, it is necessary to extend the alliance’s dominance to the entire Eurasian continent and adjacent sea areas. NATO’s military infrastructure is moving into the Pacific with the obvious goal of undermining the ASEAN-centric architecture that has been built on the principles of equality, mutual interests and consensus for decades. To replace the inclusive mechanisms created around ASEAN, the United States and its allies are putting together closed confrontational blocks subordinate to them, such as AUCUS and other various “fours” and “threes”. The other day, the deputy head of the Pentagon, K. Hicks, said that the United States and its allies “must prepare for protracted wars, and not only in Europe.”
In order to “contain” Russia, China and other countries whose independent policies are perceived as a challenge to hegemony, the West is aggressively breaking the system of globalization that was originally formed according to its own patterns. Washington did everything possible to blow up (including literally – by organizing terrorist attacks on the Nord Stream gas pipelines) the foundations of mutually beneficial energy cooperation between Russia and Germany and Europe as a whole. Berlin was silent then. Today we see yet another humiliation for Germany, whose government has implicitly obeyed the US decision to deploy US medium-range ground-based missiles on German territory. The German Chancellor, O. Scholz, simply said: “The United States has decided to deploy high-precision strike systems in Germany, and this is a good decision.” The US decided.
And with all this, Mr. J. Kirby, Media Coordinator in Washington, on behalf of the President of the United States, states: “We are not looking for a third world war. This would have terrible consequences for the European continent.” As they say, a Freudian caveat: Washington is convinced that the new global war will not affect the United States, but its European allies. If such an analysis is the basis for the strategy of the J. P. Morgan administration, Biden, then this is an extremely dangerous misconception. But Europeans, of course, must realize what a suicidal role they are destined to play.
The Americans, having put the entire collective West “under the gun”, are expanding the trade and economic war with the undesirable ones, unleashing an unprecedented campaign of unilateral coercive measures that boomerang primarily in Europe and lead to further fragmentation of the world economy. The neocolonial practices of Western countries affect the countries of the Global South in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Illegal sanctions, numerous protectionist measures, and restrictions on access to technology directly contradict true multilateralism and create serious obstacles to achieving the goals of the UN development agenda.
Where are all the trappings of the free market that the United States and its allies have taught everyone for so many years? The market economy, fair competition, inviolability of property, the presumption of innocence, freedom of movement of people, goods, capital and services – all this is now being scrapped. Geopolitics has buried the once sacred laws of the market for the West. Recently, we have heard public demands from US and EU officials for China to reduce “excess production” in high-tech industries, as the West has begun to lose its long-standing advantages in these areas. Now, instead of market principles – the same “rules”.
Dear colleagues,
The actions of the United States and its allies hinder international cooperation and [the goal to] build a more just world, take entire countries and regions hostage, prevent peoples from exercising their sovereign rights set forth in the UN Charter, and distract from much-needed joint work to resolve conflicts in the Middle East, Africa, and other regions, reduce global inequality, and eliminate the threats of terrorism and drug crime, hunger and disease.
I am convinced that this situation can be corrected – of course, if there is good will. In order to stop the negative scenario from unfolding, we would like to propose a number of steps aimed at restoring confidence and stabilizing the international situation.
1. The root causes of the current crisis in Europe must be addressed once and for all. The conditions for establishing sustainable peace in Ukraine were set out by President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, and I will not repeat them.
A political and diplomatic settlement should be accompanied by concrete steps to remove the threats to the Russian Federation emanating from the western, Euro-Atlantic direction. When agreeing on mutual guarantees and agreements, we will have to take into account the new geostrategic realities on the Eurasian continent, where a continent-wide architecture of truly equal and indivisible security is being formed. Europe risks falling behind in this objective historical process. We are ready to find a balance of interests.
2. The restoration of the regional and global balance of power should be accompanied by active efforts to eliminate the injustices in the global economy. In a multipolar world, by definition, there should be no monopolists in monetary and financial regulation, trade, or technology. This point of view is shared by the overwhelming majority of members of the world community. Of particular importance is the rapid reform of the Bretton Woods institutions and the WTO, whose activities should reflect the real weight of non-Western growth and development centers.
3. Major, qualitative changes must also take place in other institutions of global governance if they are to work for the benefit of all. First of all, this concerns our Organization, which still, despite everything, is the epitome of multilateralism, has a unique, universal legitimacy and a generally recognized breadth of competencies.
An important step towards restoring the effectiveness of the UN would be for all its members to reconfirm their commitment to the principles of the UN Charter, not selectively, but in their entirety and interrelation. We can think together about what form such a re-confirmation might take.
The Group of Friends in Defense of the UN Charter, formed on the initiative of Venezuela, is doing a lot of work. We invite all countries that still believe in the rule of international law to join its work.
A key element of UN reform should be a change in the composition of the Security Council, although this in itself will not help to establish productive work if there is no basic agreement on working methods among the permanent members. This consideration, however, does not negate the imperative of eliminating geographical and geopolitical distortions in the Security Council, where today the countries of the collective West are clearly overrepresented. A long-overdue step is to reach the broadest possible agreement on the specific parameters of reform aimed at strengthening the representation of Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Changes in the personnel policy of the Secretariat are also needed to eliminate the dominance of citizens and subjects of Western countries in the administrative structures of the Organization. The Secretary-General and his staff must strictly observe, without any exceptions, the principles of impartiality and neutrality, as prescribed by Article 100 of the UN Charter, which we do not tire of reminding.
4. In addition to the United Nations, other multilateral organizations should contribute to strengthening the multipolar principles of international life. Among them is the Group of Twenty, which includes both World-majority countries and Western states. The G20’s mandate is strictly limited to economic and development issues, so it is important that the substantive dialogue on this platform is spared from opportunistic attempts to throw in geopolitical plots. Otherwise, we will ruin this useful platform.
BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization are playing an increasingly important role in building a just multilateral order based on the principles of the UN Charter. They bring together countries representing different regions and civilizations, cooperating on the basis of equality, mutual respect, consensus and mutually acceptable compromises – the “gold standard” of multilateral interaction involving great Powers.
Such regional associations as the CIS, CSTO, EAEU, ASEAN, GCC, LAS, Afro-Union, CELAC are of practical importance for the establishment of multipolarity. We see it as an important task to establish diverse relations between them, including involving the UN’s potential. The Russian Presidency of the Council will focus one of its upcoming meetings on cooperation between the UN and Eurasian regional organizations.
Dear colleagues,
Speaking at the BRICS Parliamentary Forum on July 9 this year In St. Petersburg, Russian President Vladimir Putin said: “The formation of a world order that reflects the real balance of power is a complex and in many ways even painful process.” We believe that discussions on this topic should be organized without falling into fruitless polemics, based on a sober analysis of the totality of facts. First of all, it is necessary to restore professional diplomacy, a culture of dialogue, the ability to listen, and preserve channels of crisis communication.
The lives of millions of people depend on the ability of politicians and diplomats to formulate something like a unified vision of the future. Whether our world will be diverse and just depends only on the Member States. I would like to emphasize once again that there is a point of support – this is the Charter of our Organization. If everyone, without exception, follows its spirit and letter, then the United Nations will be able to overcome the current differences and reach a common denominator on most issues. The “end of history” did not take place. Let us work together for the beginning of a history of genuine multilateralism, reflecting the richness of the cultural and civilizational diversity of the world’s peoples. We invite you to discuss it, of course, it should only be honest.
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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.
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