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Operation Z - English version: The Hidden Truth of the War in Ukraine Revealed
Why did Putin launch Operation Z in Ukraine? Are Ukrainian forces using neo-Nazi volunteers? What are the forces involved and the reality of the military conflict for the past six months? What do we know about war crimes like Butcha? Have Western economic sanctions worked? Has the massive shipment of arms by the West had an effect on the conflict?
After the best-seller Master of the Game, whose analysis has been praised worldwide, Jacques Baud returns in this book to the root causes of the war in Ukraine and the reasons that pushed Vladimir Putin to intervene on February 24, 2022. Using information from intelligence services and official reports, he analyzes the course of the military actions and the way they were interpreted in the West. He explains the political and economic upheaval of the world order, as well as the long-term consequences of Western sanctions on our daily lives. It reveals how the conflict could have been avoided and what avenues were deliberately left open by the United States and Europe.
Colonial Jacques Baud is a former member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence, a specialist in Eastern Europe and former head of Doctrine of the United Nations Peace Operations. Within NATO, he was involved in programs in Ukraine, including after the Maidan Revolution of 2014 and 2017. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, including Putin, Master of the Game? Governing by Fake News, and The Navalny Affair, all published by Max Milo.
After the best-seller Master of the Game, whose analysis has been praised worldwide, Jacques Baud returns in this book to the root causes of the war in Ukraine and the reasons that pushed Vladimir Putin to intervene on February 24, 2022. Using information from intelligence services and official reports, he analyzes the course of the military actions and the way they were interpreted in the West. He explains the political and economic upheaval of the world order, as well as the long-term consequences of Western sanctions on our daily lives. It reveals how the conflict could have been avoided and what avenues were deliberately left open by the United States and Europe.
Colonial Jacques Baud is a former member of the Swiss Strategic Intelligence, a specialist in Eastern Europe and former head of Doctrine of the United Nations Peace Operations. Within NATO, he was involved in programs in Ukraine, including after the Maidan Revolution of 2014 and 2017. He is the author of several books on intelligence, war and terrorism, including Putin, Master of the Game? Governing by Fake News, and The Navalny Affair, all published by Max Milo.
355 pages, Kindle Edition
First published August 30, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
May 29, 2025
Much has been said about the US many times promising Gorbachev to not expand NATO one inch to the East as non-binding because it was never put in writing. This would mean that every woman on the planet promised fidelity by their man who then cheated can never take offense because the fidelity promise was not in writing. NO promise is binding unless it’s writing; see how silly that sounds? Richard Sakwa tells us, “Today NATO exists to manage the risks created by its own existence.” See how silly that sounds? Of course, the US withdrawing from the ABM Treaty (2002), Open Skies treaty (2018) and INF Treaty (2019) were also a screw you to Russia, but luckily Rachel Maddow and Heather Cox Richardson will never mention that to their viewers so liberals won’t care. Whew… The Cold War was premised on the idea that the Soviet Union was going to invade Europe, but recently declassified Soviet documents clearly show there was no such intention. Goebbels though would have approved of Truman’s strategy of boldly lying to his public about Soviet intent. Why do US liberals pretend only Putin’s 2022 Ukraine invasion was crazy/evil while ignoring the morality and legality of the US invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, Panama, Haiti, Grenada, Vietnam, Korea, Cuba, Philippines, Hawaii, Nicaragua, Columbia and others?
Fun Ukraine Facts: The President of STRATFOR (George Friedman) said the 2024 Ukraine “Coup organized by the US …was the most blatant in history.” The first official act of the post-coup Ukraine government was abolishing Russian as an official language. “The coup – far from being democratic – literally split the country in two” (nationalist western/northern Ukraine vs. the south/east a.k.a. Novorossiya) While US media pretends in Ukraine only the Donbas has any sympathy to Russia, Novorossiya is the entire southeast of Ukraine area (Crimea, Odessa, Lugansk, and Donetsk, where there are deep Russia sympathies and ties. The problem is that northwest Ukraine has the hyper-vocal rabid nationalists who routinely threaten anyone not fixated on Ukrainian racial purity. They’ve threatened Zelensky into reversing his pre-election goals of peace with Russia, and threaten basically all Ukrainian non-rabid nationalists. And these Ukrainian rabid-nationalists are often (literally) neo-Nazis. So much so that, “on 16 December 2020, only two countries rejected the UN resolution to combat the glorification of Nazism: the USA and Ukraine.” Transfer of Crimea by Khrushchev to Ukraine in 1954 was actually not legal, and in a later referendum, 93.6% of Crimeans voted to separate from Kiev. Note that in the Ukrainian Civil War of 2014, Ukraine had 35,000 defectors. It’s clearly a divided country.
The entire Chapter Three is about the dozens of Ukrainian Paramilitary Groups and their differences. To summarize you are not cool in Ukraine unless you have a patch made for your outfit that has some kind of vague rune and artwork suggesting your team alone is the hottest nationalist group going: Most famous names are the Azov Battalion, OUN, C14, Right Sector and their basic motto is either “Nazi-Derived Racial Purity While Hating on Russia” or “I Bend Over for Stepan Bandera”. A leader of Right Sector said if Zelensky had tried to adhere to the Minsk Agreements “he would lose his life. He will be hanged from a tree on [Khreshchatyk Avenue].” The author added “Zelensky is under constant threat from extreme-right movements.” When Kissinger dared say Ukraine simply needed to negotiate with Russia, he was blacklisted by the powerful Mirotvoret Battalion who (with the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) had already assassinated two Ukrainian negotiators for being “too favorable to Russia”. Tulsi Gabbard, John Mearsheimer and the author Jaques Baud have also been blacklisted in Ukraine. The Western press wants you to believe a Ukrainian victory is possible (it isn’t), which means prolonging a war that cannot be won by Ukraine. Chapter 5 tells you how the next logical step in Ukraine is to resolve the Donbas conflict, but that can’t happen while the Ukrainian nationalists (like their Zionist brethren) demand their humorless racial purity over the post-Woodstockian “All Mankind Living Together in Peace & Harmony” solution. The nationalists want war (to achieve racial purity), Ukrainians want the unified peace back they had before the Russophobic 2004 Orange Revolution. And note the West finances just the anti-Russia nationalists, not the peaceniks because the US goal is constantly ripping Russia a new one, so it may one day then focus on ripping China a new one. Venom R US.
The author says, “What is interesting is that if the West had allowed Zelensky to continue with the proposal he made to Russia at the end of March 2022, Ukraine would more or less retain its pre-February 2022 configuration.” “It should be remembered that until 2022, Vladimir Putin had always rejected the idea of integrating the southern territories of Ukraine into Russia.” Ukrainian nationalists simply hate those in southeast Ukraine for being sympathetic to Russia; think of Ukrainian nationalists fighting in Donbas as Israelis fighting Palestinians in Gaza. Zelensky fights an information war, while Putin fights a material war (for actual space). For example, Ukrainian twitter bots began right after the Russian invasion with 30,000 hits per hour while Russian bots came in a few days later with only a few hundred hits per hour (p.282).
In April 2022 after the Russian invasion, war monger Biden approved using nuclear weapons as a response to non-nuclear threats. “In other words, the US allows itself to use nuclear weapons at any time.” Biden saying yes to the OPPOSITE of both what Jesus would do, and what the sacred Jewish values of Tikkun Olam tell you to do. No wonder why US liberals refuse to criticize Biden, he’s gave the US the right to start a nuclear war – now THAT makes even war mongering Republicans look soft. Meanwhile Putin continues his (far less war mongering) doctrine of intentionally NOT using nuclear weapons first. Imagine Western Media telling you ANY of this! In August 2022, Brit PM “Liz Truss said it was acceptable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons, and that she was prepared to do so, even if it led to global annihilation.” With such scumbags leading the UK and US at the time, it’s a testament to Western propaganda that US liberals thought Putin was the crazy dangerous one and not Biden or Truss. If Putin is so evil, why pray tell has he never attacked Kiev? The author says active US bioweapons labs in Ukraine are “an established fact.”
Shooting Yourself Repeatedly in the Foot: This book shows that since the 2014 Ukrainian Maidan coup, the US has tried to isolate Russia from the international community and INSTEAD has isolated the US further from the international community. Brilliant idea: Let’s fight Russia knowing that the US relies completely on Russian enriched uranium for ALL our reactors and let’s pretend we don’t need Russian nickel, palladium, fertilizer, wheat, or oil. Let’s ignore that “82% of the world population refuses to condemn Vladimir Putin.” Let’s ignore that Putin’s approval rating became 83% AFTER his Ukraine invasion. Obama couldn’t have achieved that approval rating if he dropped naked pics of Michelle on Tinder. Let’s ignore that the US is up to its eyeballs in debt while “Russia is one of the least indebted countries in the world.” Let’s ignore that US sanctions encourage Russia to develop their own consumer products, work closer w/ China, and reduce dependence on foreign capital. US Operation Counter-Productive is a Success! The job of sanctions is not to punish but cause pain. Sanctions against Russia are meant to make the Russian people suffer so that they will somehow rise and turn on their leader who has an approval rating higher than any US president could dream of. The author writes, “Apparently, the idea of making a civilian population suffer seems perfectly compatible with our values.” See? I’m not the only person who studies all the venal crap the US routinely does and then makes sarcastic comments. Funny how the Ukraine proxy war instead drives Russia closer to China – the opposite of what you’d think the US would want. The joke about US sanctions is that Europe now won’t buy Russian oil but still ends up buying Russian oil at FULL price after it was sold to Saudi Arabia at reduced price and then Saudi Arabia adds the middleman’s fees jacking it back to full oil price.
The Joys of Sending Weapons to Ukraine: The US produces only 2,100 Javelin anti-tanks missiles per year, but Ukraine uses 500 daily! CBS News reported that “only 60-70% of Western-supplied weapons arrived on the battlefield.” Our western press approved Ukrainian nationalists are black market reselling 30 to 40% of the weapons we give them personal enrichment rather than for the benefits of their own group. Presently on the dark web, US FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles sell for $30,000 each. And it has been documented (p.340) that these weapons are even falling into Russian hands – “Russians have recovered considerable quantities of FGM-148 Javelins.” What a counter-productive shitshow; imagine making missiles to GIVE to your enemy who won’t even pay you for it. Pause to salute the American flag.
This was a great book. I’m really glad I read it. This book was particularly good on showing you where the present Ukraine proxy war is being fought in the Southeast, and what are the many different Ukraine nationalist groups with their stupid patches and their particular objective.
Fun Ukraine Facts: The President of STRATFOR (George Friedman) said the 2024 Ukraine “Coup organized by the US …was the most blatant in history.” The first official act of the post-coup Ukraine government was abolishing Russian as an official language. “The coup – far from being democratic – literally split the country in two” (nationalist western/northern Ukraine vs. the south/east a.k.a. Novorossiya) While US media pretends in Ukraine only the Donbas has any sympathy to Russia, Novorossiya is the entire southeast of Ukraine area (Crimea, Odessa, Lugansk, and Donetsk, where there are deep Russia sympathies and ties. The problem is that northwest Ukraine has the hyper-vocal rabid nationalists who routinely threaten anyone not fixated on Ukrainian racial purity. They’ve threatened Zelensky into reversing his pre-election goals of peace with Russia, and threaten basically all Ukrainian non-rabid nationalists. And these Ukrainian rabid-nationalists are often (literally) neo-Nazis. So much so that, “on 16 December 2020, only two countries rejected the UN resolution to combat the glorification of Nazism: the USA and Ukraine.” Transfer of Crimea by Khrushchev to Ukraine in 1954 was actually not legal, and in a later referendum, 93.6% of Crimeans voted to separate from Kiev. Note that in the Ukrainian Civil War of 2014, Ukraine had 35,000 defectors. It’s clearly a divided country.
The entire Chapter Three is about the dozens of Ukrainian Paramilitary Groups and their differences. To summarize you are not cool in Ukraine unless you have a patch made for your outfit that has some kind of vague rune and artwork suggesting your team alone is the hottest nationalist group going: Most famous names are the Azov Battalion, OUN, C14, Right Sector and their basic motto is either “Nazi-Derived Racial Purity While Hating on Russia” or “I Bend Over for Stepan Bandera”. A leader of Right Sector said if Zelensky had tried to adhere to the Minsk Agreements “he would lose his life. He will be hanged from a tree on [Khreshchatyk Avenue].” The author added “Zelensky is under constant threat from extreme-right movements.” When Kissinger dared say Ukraine simply needed to negotiate with Russia, he was blacklisted by the powerful Mirotvoret Battalion who (with the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) had already assassinated two Ukrainian negotiators for being “too favorable to Russia”. Tulsi Gabbard, John Mearsheimer and the author Jaques Baud have also been blacklisted in Ukraine. The Western press wants you to believe a Ukrainian victory is possible (it isn’t), which means prolonging a war that cannot be won by Ukraine. Chapter 5 tells you how the next logical step in Ukraine is to resolve the Donbas conflict, but that can’t happen while the Ukrainian nationalists (like their Zionist brethren) demand their humorless racial purity over the post-Woodstockian “All Mankind Living Together in Peace & Harmony” solution. The nationalists want war (to achieve racial purity), Ukrainians want the unified peace back they had before the Russophobic 2004 Orange Revolution. And note the West finances just the anti-Russia nationalists, not the peaceniks because the US goal is constantly ripping Russia a new one, so it may one day then focus on ripping China a new one. Venom R US.
The author says, “What is interesting is that if the West had allowed Zelensky to continue with the proposal he made to Russia at the end of March 2022, Ukraine would more or less retain its pre-February 2022 configuration.” “It should be remembered that until 2022, Vladimir Putin had always rejected the idea of integrating the southern territories of Ukraine into Russia.” Ukrainian nationalists simply hate those in southeast Ukraine for being sympathetic to Russia; think of Ukrainian nationalists fighting in Donbas as Israelis fighting Palestinians in Gaza. Zelensky fights an information war, while Putin fights a material war (for actual space). For example, Ukrainian twitter bots began right after the Russian invasion with 30,000 hits per hour while Russian bots came in a few days later with only a few hundred hits per hour (p.282).
In April 2022 after the Russian invasion, war monger Biden approved using nuclear weapons as a response to non-nuclear threats. “In other words, the US allows itself to use nuclear weapons at any time.” Biden saying yes to the OPPOSITE of both what Jesus would do, and what the sacred Jewish values of Tikkun Olam tell you to do. No wonder why US liberals refuse to criticize Biden, he’s gave the US the right to start a nuclear war – now THAT makes even war mongering Republicans look soft. Meanwhile Putin continues his (far less war mongering) doctrine of intentionally NOT using nuclear weapons first. Imagine Western Media telling you ANY of this! In August 2022, Brit PM “Liz Truss said it was acceptable to strike Russia with nuclear weapons, and that she was prepared to do so, even if it led to global annihilation.” With such scumbags leading the UK and US at the time, it’s a testament to Western propaganda that US liberals thought Putin was the crazy dangerous one and not Biden or Truss. If Putin is so evil, why pray tell has he never attacked Kiev? The author says active US bioweapons labs in Ukraine are “an established fact.”
Shooting Yourself Repeatedly in the Foot: This book shows that since the 2014 Ukrainian Maidan coup, the US has tried to isolate Russia from the international community and INSTEAD has isolated the US further from the international community. Brilliant idea: Let’s fight Russia knowing that the US relies completely on Russian enriched uranium for ALL our reactors and let’s pretend we don’t need Russian nickel, palladium, fertilizer, wheat, or oil. Let’s ignore that “82% of the world population refuses to condemn Vladimir Putin.” Let’s ignore that Putin’s approval rating became 83% AFTER his Ukraine invasion. Obama couldn’t have achieved that approval rating if he dropped naked pics of Michelle on Tinder. Let’s ignore that the US is up to its eyeballs in debt while “Russia is one of the least indebted countries in the world.” Let’s ignore that US sanctions encourage Russia to develop their own consumer products, work closer w/ China, and reduce dependence on foreign capital. US Operation Counter-Productive is a Success! The job of sanctions is not to punish but cause pain. Sanctions against Russia are meant to make the Russian people suffer so that they will somehow rise and turn on their leader who has an approval rating higher than any US president could dream of. The author writes, “Apparently, the idea of making a civilian population suffer seems perfectly compatible with our values.” See? I’m not the only person who studies all the venal crap the US routinely does and then makes sarcastic comments. Funny how the Ukraine proxy war instead drives Russia closer to China – the opposite of what you’d think the US would want. The joke about US sanctions is that Europe now won’t buy Russian oil but still ends up buying Russian oil at FULL price after it was sold to Saudi Arabia at reduced price and then Saudi Arabia adds the middleman’s fees jacking it back to full oil price.
The Joys of Sending Weapons to Ukraine: The US produces only 2,100 Javelin anti-tanks missiles per year, but Ukraine uses 500 daily! CBS News reported that “only 60-70% of Western-supplied weapons arrived on the battlefield.” Our western press approved Ukrainian nationalists are black market reselling 30 to 40% of the weapons we give them personal enrichment rather than for the benefits of their own group. Presently on the dark web, US FGM-148 Javelin anti-tank missiles sell for $30,000 each. And it has been documented (p.340) that these weapons are even falling into Russian hands – “Russians have recovered considerable quantities of FGM-148 Javelins.” What a counter-productive shitshow; imagine making missiles to GIVE to your enemy who won’t even pay you for it. Pause to salute the American flag.
This was a great book. I’m really glad I read it. This book was particularly good on showing you where the present Ukraine proxy war is being fought in the Southeast, and what are the many different Ukraine nationalist groups with their stupid patches and their particular objective.
July 12, 2023
fantastically researched
Jacques Baud delivers the truth with intelligence and analytical skills sorely lacking in the current debate around war and peace in Ukraine. Level headed and descriptive , well sourced and very convincing ! Showing the “ West” how wrong they are. The question is: will they listen and adapt?
Jacques Baud delivers the truth with intelligence and analytical skills sorely lacking in the current debate around war and peace in Ukraine. Level headed and descriptive , well sourced and very convincing ! Showing the “ West” how wrong they are. The question is: will they listen and adapt?
September 24, 2023
This book is the best explanation of how the West is mislead about the war in Ukraine you can find. Jaques Baud is a former NATO specialist. He saw these lies perpetrated for himself and he is warning us where it is leading. We must not ignore this.
It is not a matter of "Putin hates democracy" or "Russia wants more land" or "It was the expansion of NATO." Those are all bullshit oversimplifications and the truth is even more terrifying. Do not repeat them until you have studied more please.
This book scared me more than most because of the rational and dangerous ways in which the West is leading men in Ukraine to their deaths and the media is complicit in these lies. Baud only uses Western sources in order to prove what the people behind these lies really know and intend.
This book is being repressed in search. Read it and you'll see why.
Note: The English translation is not perfect but it is not distracting. Not a reason not to read it!
It is not a matter of "Putin hates democracy" or "Russia wants more land" or "It was the expansion of NATO." Those are all bullshit oversimplifications and the truth is even more terrifying. Do not repeat them until you have studied more please.
This book scared me more than most because of the rational and dangerous ways in which the West is leading men in Ukraine to their deaths and the media is complicit in these lies. Baud only uses Western sources in order to prove what the people behind these lies really know and intend.
This book is being repressed in search. Read it and you'll see why.
Note: The English translation is not perfect but it is not distracting. Not a reason not to read it!
August 27, 2023
I have mixed feelings about this book.
The insight and information the author provides about the situation between Russia and Ukraine, and the other influences of that war is excellent, and I'm really grateful to have a deeper understanding of the situation.
I wasn't impressed with the writing -- lots of grammatical errors, and quite clunky in a lot of places, as well as sentences that I was unable to understand. And that's tough when the book is 400+ pages.
Still, it's well worth the read to get a better understanding of the situation in Ukraine right now.
The insight and information the author provides about the situation between Russia and Ukraine, and the other influences of that war is excellent, and I'm really grateful to have a deeper understanding of the situation.
I wasn't impressed with the writing -- lots of grammatical errors, and quite clunky in a lot of places, as well as sentences that I was unable to understand. And that's tough when the book is 400+ pages.
Still, it's well worth the read to get a better understanding of the situation in Ukraine right now.
October 2, 2023
Livre intéressant qui offre une autre perspective du conflit ukrainien.
January 1, 2025
Some very interesting facts on a disastrous conflict affecting Global issues today.
April 6, 2025
Complete BS. Wandering how much Putin is forking out to Baud for this crap.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews