We are not on the first anniversary of the war, as Western governments and Western media claim. We are on our ninth anniversary. And it matters a lot.

The war began with the violent overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, a coup that was openly and covertly supported by the US government to expand NATO. During his presidency (2010-2014), Yanukovych maintained military neutrality precisely to avoid a civil war or proxy war in Ukraine. But this prevented the expansion of NATO into Ukraine and Georgia, which the United States has been trying to achieve since 2008.

We must not forget this relentless pursuit of NATO enlargement. The United States and Germany explicitly and repeatedly promised Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand “an inch to the east” after Gorbachev dissolved the Soviet military alliance known as the Warsaw Pact. The entire proposal for NATO expansion was a violation of the agreements made with the Soviet Union and therefore with the future state of Russia.

The neoconservatives are promoting NATO expansion because they seek to encircle Russia in the Black Sea region, as Britain and France did during the Crimean War (1853-56). American strategist Zbigniew Brzezinski called Ukraine the “geographical axis” of Eurasia. If the US could encircle Russia in the Black Sea region and integrate Ukraine into its military alliance, Russia’s ability to project power in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Middle East and the world would disappear, at least in theory.

American filmmaker Oliver Stone helps us understand US involvement in the coup and what an American regime change operation looks like in his 2016 documentary Ukraine on Fire. Professor Ivan Kachanovsky of the University of Ottawa has written major academic studies examining the Maidan evidence and finding that most of the violence and killings did not come from Yanukovych’s security forces, but from the conspirators themselves, who fired into the crowd, killing both police and protesters.

The coup started the war nine years ago. An extra-constitutional, right-wing, anti-Russian and ultra-nationalist government came to power in Kyiv. After the coup, Russia immediately returned Crimea after a quick referendum and war broke out in the Donbass as Russians in the Ukrainian army switched sides to oppose the government after the coup in Kiev.

The war began with the violent overthrow of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in 2014 in a US government-backed coup.

NATO almost immediately began pouring billions of dollars worth of weapons into Ukraine, and the war escalated. The peace agreements Minsk-1 and Minsk-2, co-guarantors of which were France and Germany, did not work, firstly, because the nationalist Ukrainian government in Kiev refused to implement them, and, secondly, because Germany and France did not insist on their implementation, as former Chancellor Angela Merkel recently admitted.

At the end of 2021, President Putin made it clear that the three red lines for Russia are: (1) rejection of NATO expansion in Ukraine, (2) maintaining Russian control over Crimea, and (3) resolving the war in Donbas with implementation of the Minsk-2 agreement. The Biden White House has refused to negotiate NATO expansion.

The Russian invasion happened tragically and misguidedly in February 2022, eight years after the coup against Yanukovych. The United States has provided tens of billions of dollars of equipment and budgetary support since 2014, redoubling US efforts to expand its military alliance in Ukraine and Georgia. The dead and destruction on this escalating battlefield is terrifying. The US blocked negotiations (especially in March 2022) and reportedly destroyed the Nord Stream gas pipeline in September 2022.

We are on a catastrophic escalation path, and the story that we are living through the first anniversary of a war is a lie that obscures the causes of this war and the way it is ended. This war must be stopped before it drags us all into nuclear Armageddon. I applaud the peace movement for its valiant efforts, especially in the face of the brazen lies and propaganda of the US government and the cowardly silence of European governments who are completely subservient to American neoconservatives.

We must speak the truth. Both sides must retreat. NATO must stop trying to expand at the expense of Ukraine and Georgia. Russia must leave Ukraine. We must take into account the red lines of both sides so that the world can survive.

Mr. Jeffrey Sachs is an economist and professor in the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.