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"We live in a time where there’s an acceleration of polarized thinking. It’s us versus them, whoever they are. We make war with such certainty, yet we are befuddled how to create peace. This paradox requires reflection if we are to survive. Making and endorsing war requires a secret love of death." — former Democratic Congressman Dennis Kucinich
When it comes to the war in Ukraine, what would “peace” actually mean for all sides?
Russia’s invasion was illegal, brutal, and has caused unimaginable suffering — from human rights abuses, millions of Ukrainians displaced, entire cities destroyed, and the criminalization of dissent for Russians who dare to question the war. In both Russia and Ukraine, a generation of young people have died fighting on the frontlines. Regardless of our current polarized climate, most of us want an end to this tragic war that's injured or killed nearly one million people.
Yet when this conflict is forced into an oversimplified moral framework and the US war machine is painted as a noble protector of the innocent being sabotaged by Trump at every turn, there’s no room for a conversation on a real pathway to peace.
Russia's disinformation campaigns are real, but they’ve also been used as a convenient excuse to shut down legitimate scrutiny of the war. In fact, much of what’s labeled as Russian propaganda appears credible. The evidence presented here in this investigation comes from verifiable official records, declassified documents, and US mainstream media reports. None of this makes Putin the good guy — it just means the full story is more complex than we’ve been told.
We're here to share the best of our verifiable research to uncover the hidden forces shaping this war and public discourse today.
Questioning the war does not automatically make me — or anyone else — a Russian propagandist, a MAGA talking point, or an enemy of democracy. It’s part of a long-standing tradition: peace activists, whistleblowers, journalists, and ordinary people who all dared to question the media and US government when they tried to tell them who the enemies were.
WantToKnow.info was founded by Fred Burks, a high-level State Department whistleblower who testified in a major terrorism trial during his time as a language interpreter for top presidents and government officials around the world. His experience revealed how the reality presented to the American public in media was heavily edited, while behind the scenes US officials bullied and coerced other nations into serving US interests.
While Donald Trump and J.D. Vance’s actions in the Oval Office during their meeting with Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy struck many as disrespectful, their brazen, public approach exposed practices that are normally hidden behind diplomatic polish and media-friendly messaging.
War narratives in the US have long been carefully managed through bipartisan cooperation, with the White House, Congress, intelligence agencies, and media largely speaking with one voice. But that unified front has fractured. For the first time in modern history, a sitting president’s messaging is openly at odds with Washington’s business-as-usual faction of pro-war policymakers, whose influence over major media outlets has long ensured that the press amplifies the priorities of the national security state.
The Central Intelligence Agency owns everyone of any significance in the major media.
— William Colby, former CIA director from 1973-1976
We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.
— William Casey, former CIA director from 1981-1987
This situation is clearly not just about Trump or geopolitics — it’s also about a domestic power struggle over who gets to manufacture reality for the American people. We hope this nuanced investigation serves as a call to invite the type of open dialogue and balanced thinking that might bring about real peace and good-faith diplomacy for all sides.
'It drops into a big black hole'
Since Russia's invasion in 2022, the US has sent over $180 billion to Ukraine in their war against Russia. Instead of learning from Afghanistan, where 40% of US aid flowed into the hands of corrupt officials and criminals, House Democrats blocked efforts to ensure accountability for the hundreds of billions sent to Ukraine.
The New York Times reported in 2023 that $980 million in weapons contracts had missed their delivery dates—with prepayments vanishing into foreign bank accounts. Western-funded projects like Neo-Eco, a firm specializing in sustainable development and ecological reconstruction projects, were shaken down for bribes by the local military administration last year. When companies refused to pay, projects were obstructed or abandoned — meaning aid wasn’t just wasted, it became a vehicle for extortion.
Seymour Hersh, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who exposed the My Lai Massacre during the Vietnam War, wrote a bombshell report based on interviews with anonymous CIA officials. They alleged that corruption in Ukraine is approaching Afghan War levels, where Zelensky’s government has been buying Russian diesel to fuel its army, while skimming millions from American funds designated for diesel payments. Additionally, corrupt officials are profiting from arms deals and kickbacks through shady international front companies.
A watchdog report found that the Pentagon did not properly track $1 billion worth of military equipment sent to Ukraine. US officials and defense analysts have raised alarms that American weapons meant for Ukraine are winding up in the hands of militias and terrorist groups all over the world. CBS News released a documentary revealing that most weapons sent to the Ukraine never even made it to their intended destination.
"We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” said one source briefed on US intelligence. “It drops into a big black hole."
— "What happens to weapons sent to Ukraine? The US doesn’t really know," CNN News
The staggering scale of fraud, waste, and abuse in Ukraine is often dismissed as Kremlin propaganda. While we're told to look the other way, pervasive war-time corruption in Ukraine has a profound human impact. As the Executive Director of UN Women warned, this war’s trauma could “destroy a generation.” Our collective negligence to follow the money betrays both the Ukrainian people and the American public.
Disaster Capitalism in Ukraine
Just like the Pentagon Papers exposed how top generals knew Vietnam was unwinnable long before the public did, US intelligence leaks showed officials knew Ukraine’s counteroffensive was likely to fail — even as they kept pouring in billions and telling the public victory was within reach.
War has always been a racket—protecting the financial interests of elites, bankers, and Wall Street while civilians and soldiers paid the biggest price. Defense contractors benefit directly from endless wars, making peace a threat to their financial bottom line.
In Ukraine, AI-powered weapons and drones are being deployed faster than international law can even begin to regulate them. Big Tech is profiting lavishly from their multibillion dollar contracts with the Pentagon—racing to deploy untested, dangerous AI warfare technologies. Far from making the world safer, these technologies have led to the murder of tens of thousands of civilians, they're riddled with flawed intelligence and faulty targeting, and they create more terrorists than they stop. Retired generals and former top officials are now flocking to Silicon Valley venture firms investing billions in emerging warfare tech and space surveillance. These same insiders then lobby their former colleagues in government to steer military contracts and policies that benefit the companies they now work for.
Blackrock, one of the largest asset management firms in the world and considered to be the fourth branch of the government, profits at every stage of the Ukraine war. First, Blackrock buys up government bonds used to finance military spending, meaning it directly profits from the debt created by war itself. Then, after the war, Blackrock is set to profit again — this time from reconstruction contracts, land grabs, and privatization efforts. Blackrock played a direct role in advising Ukraine’s government on post-war reconstruction plans, meaning it’s helping design the very policies that will open Ukraine’s economy to further corporate and foreign control — including the forced sale of land to Western agribusinesses and investment funds.
This is what disaster capitalism looks like: War creates the destruction, and companies like BlackRock profit from both the weapons and the rebuilding — all while ordinary Ukrainians, farmers, and workers are stripped of their land and sovereignty.
Although the surge in military spending was often framed as urgent aid for Ukraine over the years, much of it merely advanced the Pentagon’s pre-existing plans. The Biden administration’s $813 billion military budget for 2023 was already planned well before Russia invaded Ukraine—a budget that exceeded the combined defense budgets of the next eight largest military powers, including Russia, China, and India. These included plans for nuclear weapons upgrades, with the US now projected to spend up to $1.5 trillion over the next 30 years on its nuclear arsenal.
Ukrainians Deserved Democracy — Instead, They Got Exploited
The official narrative is that NATO and the US are defenders of peace and global order, simply helping Ukraine protect its sovereignty. Any criticism of Ukraine's government and the role of the US in the war is often dismissed as Russian propaganda.
But it's not Russian propaganda to point out that Ukraine has long been known as one of the most corrupt countries in Europe, run by oligarchs who loot the country while ordinary Ukrainians are forced to pay bribes for medical and other essential services. Ukraine is even known to be one of the biggest illegal arms markets in all of Europe, according to the 2021 Global Organized Crime Index.
World-renowned economist Dr. Jeffrey Sachs has advised governments worldwide on economic development, poverty alleviation, health and aid policy, and environmental sustainability. Drawing on his historical expertise and his firsthand role advising Ukraine’s prime minister after the 2014 Maidan coup, Sachs has spoken extensively about the decades-long pattern of US provocations and propaganda leading up to the war. Below, we discuss how Western powers have exploited Ukraine's struggles for their own geopolitical aims.
Aggressive Attempts To Expand NATO
NATO was created in 1949 specifically to counter the Soviet Union. According to a 1950 declassified top-secret document, US officials supported Ukrainian far-right nationalist groups — including those with documented ties to Nazi Germany — as part of a Cold War strategy to turn Ukraine into a base for covert operations and psychological warfare aimed at weakening the Soviet Union.
When the Soviet Union collapsed, declassified documents show that the US promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward" beyond Germany. Yet since the 90s, NATO has added 14 countries, moving closer and closer to Russia’s borders. In 2008, NATO promised an eventual membership to Ukraine. Russia naturally saw this as a direct threat to their national security, since Crimea is home to Russia's Black Sea fleet.
Imagine if Russia started building military bases in Mexico and Canada, or invited them into a military alliance led by Putin. Would the US just sit back and accept it? Of course not. Being surrounded by enemy forces would make the US look weak on the world stage. This is how Russia sees NATO in Ukraine — not as a defensive alliance, but as a direct military threat parked on its doorstep.
The CIA-Backed 2014 Maidan Coup and Ukraine's Neo-Nazi Problem
In 2013, Ukraine’s elected president Viktor Yanukovych faced a tough choice: sign a trade deal with the EU that came with harsh economic conditions or accept a no-strings-attached loan from Russia.
The harsh economic conditions came from the IMF (International Monetary Fund) — a powerful global financial institution that offers loans to struggling countries, but always with strings attached. In Ukraine’s case, the IMF said if Ukraine wanted the loan and the EU trade deal, they had to cut pensions, freeze wages, slash social spending, and raise household gas prices. These policies would hit ordinary Ukrainians hard and make Ukraine permanently dependent on Western lenders, investors, and policymakers. These kinds of conditions are standard for IMF deals.
Yanukovych ended up choosing the Russian deal, sparking nationwide protests in February 2014 that spiraled into a violent insurrection driven by far-right militias and Neo-Nazi groups. Yanukovych was indeed corrupt, and his corruption was weaponized and used as a pretext for regime change. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland was caught on a phone line with the US Russian ambassador in January 2014, discussing who the US wanted to lead Ukraine’s government before Yanukovych was even ousted. Top US senators personally went to Kiev to stir up the protests.
The coup brought the notorious Azov Battalion into Ukraine’s military ranks, a far-right group tied to credible human rights violations. Ethnic Russians were brutally suppressed, tortured, and killed by these groups. Anti-Maidan protesters and ethnic Russians were chased into a trade union building in Odessa and set on fire with Molotov cocktails. As people burned alive, the crowd sang the Ukrainian national anthem and painted the building with Nazi symbols. The Odessa Massacre left at least 48 people dead. To this day, Ukrainian authorities have refused to properly investigate what happened, despite calls from the United Nations and the European Union .
In 2016, Congress lifted a ban that prevented funds from falling into the hands of Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups. The US supplied these groups with weapons like PSRL-1 rocket launchers, Javelin missiles, and other military aid. US officials met directly with Azov commanders and continued supporting them as part of a strategy to weaken Russia even after Azov’s extremist ideology and international white supremacist ties were fully exposed.
Ukraine’s new pro-West government pushed to join NATO, which crossed a red line in Moscow's eyes. The US-backed coup also directly threatened Russia’s Black Sea naval fleet, so Russia responded by annexing Crimea.
Mainstream media often talks about Russia’s annexation of Crimea as illegal aggression. Yet Crimea is strategically vital to Russia and has deep historical ties. In the late 1700s, Crimea became central to Russia’s naval power under Russian empress Catherine the Great. Now, it is home to mostly ethnic-Russians who voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia in 2014.
After the Maidan coup, oligarchs continued to loot the country, with Western aid and loans increasingly part of the money flow. Polls in Ukraine even showed that Ukrainians were more concerned about government corruption than pro-Russian rebels.
Who Controls the Media Narrative?
After years of banning the Azov Battalion as a dangerous neo-Nazi group, Facebook parent company Meta quietly reversed its policy after Russia invaded Ukraine — allowing praise for Azov while loosening rules on violent content and hate speech. As Meta’s Counterterrorism and Dangerous Organizations team member [Hannah] Byrne reports, "The heavily armed hate group sanctioned by Congress since 2018 were now freedom fighters resisting occupation, not terroristic racists. Meta’s censorship systems are basically an extension of the government. You want military, Department of State, CIA people enforcing free speech? That is what is concerning."
Fact-checking platform NewsGuard received a $749,387 Pentagon contract to police “false narratives” about Ukraine, pressuring independent outlets like Consortium News to censor or change credible reporting on neo-Nazis in Ukraine and US influence. Yet Consortium News, founded by a Polk Award-winning investigative journalist, is far from fake news. When Consortium News refused, NewsGuard labeled the entire site as misinformation — cutting off ad revenue and making it harder for readers to find their work. After Consortium News sued NewsGuard, their website was hacked and all of its content was removed.
Oksana Romanyuk, the Director of Ukraine’s Institute for Mass Information, even recently admitted that almost 90% of Ukraine's media are bankrolled by US funding. Leila Bicakcic, CEO of the Center for Investigative Reporting (a Bosnian organization supported by the US) put it simply: “If you are funded by the US government, there are certain topics that you would simply not go after, because the US government has its interests that are above all others.”
It's barely beginning to come to the light the massive censorship campaign to silence and smear journalists shining a light on uncomfortable truths that challenged the official story about the Ukraine war. Independent Ukrainian journalist Ostap Stakhiv exposed Ukraine’s military practices of abducting and torturing men to force them into military service. Instead of investigating the abuse, Ukraine’s media launched a coordinated smear campaign against Stakhiv, branding him a conspiracy theorist and anti-vaxxer.
In Ukraine, Zelensky consolidated all TV networks into a single state-controlled platform, and new laws let the government block any news it didn't like. Public blacklists encouraged Ukrainians to snitch on neighbors, teachers, and family for suspected “pro-Russian views.” Leftist dissidents, independent journalists, and peace activists have been arrested, tortured, killed, or exiled.
How the US and UK Destroyed Peace
Mainstream media repeatedly frames the US and Ukraine as defenders of peace — while portraying Russia as the sole aggressor. Yes, Putin is a warmonger who's committed crimes against humanity. But so have many of America’s allies, from Saudi Arabia to Israel. The media rarely unleashes the same moral outrage or demands for isolation that we see when it comes to Russia. If we care about peace, we have to be honest about how the US has fueled this war every step of the way.
Since 2008, Russia has proposed peace talks and security negotiations with the US and NATO at least five times, only to be rejected each time in favor of a 30+ year neocon strategy aimed at weakening Russia through military and economic pressure. As recently as June 2024, Putin publicly called for renewed negotiations, but the US, NATO, and Ukraine once again flatly rejected the offer.
There are three core issues for Russia: Ukraine’s neutrality (non-NATO enlargement), Crimea remaining in Russian hands, and boundary changes in Eastern and Southern Ukraine. The first two are almost surely non-negotiable. The end of NATO enlargement is the fundamental casus belli. Crimea is also core for Russia, as Crimea has been home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet since 1783 and is fundamental to Russia’s national security. — Economist and former advisor to the Ukrainian government Jeffrey Sachs, "Why Won't the US Help Negotiate a Peaceful End to the War in Ukraine?," Common Dreams
Putin’s core demands of Ukrainian neutrality, no NATO membership, protection for Russian-speaking citizens, recognition of Crimea and parts of Donbas as Russian, and addressing the influence of neo-Nazi forces in Ukraine’s military — are not wildly unreasonable. In fact, these points were largely agreed upon during the 2022 Istanbul peace talks, where Russia and Ukraine were reportedly close to a negotiated settlement with Ukraine agreeing to neutrality.
Yet the deal was sabotaged after UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson flew to Kyiv, urging Zelensky to abandon talks and fight for total victory instead. He emphasized that the West wouldn’t support any peace deal regardless of what Ukraine wanted. In October 2022, Zelensky signed a law formally banning peace talks with Russia as long as Putin remains in power — effectively closing the door on negotiations. This move came against the wishes of the majority of his own people, with polls showing that over half of Ukrainians support peace, even if it requires territorial compromises.
Besides Putin, Who Are The Enemies of Democracy and Peace?
The Atlantic Council framed the 2022 peace talks as the destruction of Ukraine. This makes sense. After all, the Atlantic Council is heavily funded by the US government, NATO, and weapons manufacturers, all of whom directly benefit from prolonging the war. As aforementioned economist Jeffrey Sachs recently made clear in an interview with NBC News this past week, fears that Ukraine will collapse if Russia wins are nothing new. During Vietnam, General Westmoreland pushed the "domino theory," warning that if Vietnam fell, all of Southeast Asia would turn communist. Yet the Pentagon Papers revealed that top generals lied about the war’s purpose, progress, and costs — showing the real goal was protecting US power, not defending freedom or Vietnam’s self-determination.
Protestors of the Iraq War were accused of being unpatriotic and siding with terrorists. John Lennon’s "Imagine" was one of over 100 songs deemed to have "questionable lyrics" and was banned from American radio after 9/11. In the two weeks leading up to the Iraq invasion, 75% of the experts featured on major US news broadcasts were current or former government and military officials — leaving virtually no room for independent analysis, skepticism, or dissenting voices.
If we’ve learned anything from Iraq, it’s that governments and media often work together to sell wars based on lies. A massive database even tracked the 935 false statements that the Bush administration told the public about the Iraq war. And we now know that the US invaded Iraq under false pretenses, presenting fabricated evidence to the UN Security Council suggesting that Saddam Hussein possessed advanced weapons of mass destruction. Secret memos eventually revealed that the invasion of Iraq was largely about controlling Iraq’s oil fields.
We’re not dealing with, as we’re told every day, with this mad man like Hitler coming at us and violating this and violating that, and [Putin is] going to take over Europe. This is complete bogus, fake history that is a purely PR narrative of the US government, and it doesn’t stand up at all to anyone that knows anything. — Economist Jeffrey Sachs speaking at the historical Cambridge Union
The US refuses to accept a multipolar world—using its military, economic, and political influence to maintain global dominance. Carnegie Mellon University researcher Dov Levin tracked more than 80 times that the US has interfered in elections of other countries between 1946 and 2000. Ex-CIA director James Woolsey even admitted that the agency meddles in other countries’ elections “for a good cause.” In an effort to remain the global dominant force, the US has a long legacy of funding and supporting fascists, drug lords and terrorists all over the world.
In Ukraine, there's been a decades long attempt for control over the Black Sea of Ukraine. A US State Department-sponsored report notes that Ukraine sits between Russia’s vast energy supplies and Europe’s growing demand, making it a critical energy transit route. By pulling Ukraine into the Western camp, the US hoped to weaken Russia’s grip on Europe’s energy and strengthen its own geopolitical influence.
Economist Jeffrey Sachs has repeatedly warned that the Ukraine war is a financial jackpot for US energy companies — who stepped in to replace Russia’s cheap gas with far more expensive American liquefied natural gas (LNG). After the Nord Stream pipelines were mysteriously sabotaged, Europe’s dependence on overpriced US gas was locked in — a move that Sachs believes served US strategic and corporate interests at Europe’s expense. Along with award-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's explosive story on how the US was behind the Nord Stream pipeline attacks, there is convincing evidence that the US might've played a bigger role than what we're told in the media. Biden even made public statements threatening to end Nord Stream long before it was sabotaged.
A Real Pathway to Peace
If we want peace, how do we achieve peace and sustain it? Instead of using Ukraine as a proxy battleground, Sachs' recent address at the EU Parliament calls for economic cooperation between the West, Ukraine, and Russia — including shared development projects, energy agreements, and regional economic integration to build interdependence instead of division.
Future profits from Ukraine's mineral wealth resources are being used as a bargaining chip in diplomatic negotiations. Initially introduced by Zelensky, the US is negotiating a deal to claim 50% of Ukraine’s future profits from natural resources — including minerals, oil, and gas — through a joint investment fund.
NBC News recently reported that Russia has also openly offered the US access to rare earth minerals in Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine. Putin's willingness to negotiate over these minerals could be seen as a sign that Russia is open to economic agreements instead of endless war. If both sides have a shared financial interest, it creates a strong incentive to avoid further military escalation. In other words, economic cooperation could actually serve as a pathway to de-escalation and peace. This also challenges the idea that Russia is only interested in conquering Ukraine outright — if that were true, they wouldn’t be offering to cut the US in at all.
Wars don’t end because one side is virtuous and the other is evil. Wars end when core interests of both sides are acknowledged, even if one side is the aggressor. If we only see Russia as the problem, we learn nothing from this whole conflict. In the real world, peace comes from hard compromise — where neither side gets everything they want, but the bloodshed and killing of innocent people finally ends.
Right now, people all over the world are turning away from the cycles of fear and control that justify war. Our latest 25-min mini-documentary, "Transforming the War Machine, One Human Story at a Time," explores some of the most powerful real-life stories of healing in the face of the destructive war machine. These powerful acts of humanity challenge the destructive forces keeping us divided and polarized, planting the seeds of a global shift in consciousness that could inspire the transformation of our world.
We can’t shift the chaos we’re in until we name it clearly. Challenging information can paradoxically remind us of the greater good. It is the courage of the people and the love for the common good that brings these injustices to light—fueling open dialogue and constructive action.
With faith in a transforming world,
Amber Yang for PEERS and WantToKnow.info
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