by Eric Zuesse, The Duran:

Bloomberg News headlined on December 12th, “Can Europe’s Energy Bridge to Russia Ever Be Rebuilt?” and the hired columnist said “I’m with the ‘yes’ crowd — even if Vladimir Putin stays in the Kremlin.” He said that this will be necessary for Europe because “if it’s going to keep its chemical, food and heavy industries competitive, it will need some cheap gas. And there isn’t cheaper gas for Europe than Russia’s.” Well, that’s true. But in order to keep up the U.S.-and-allied billionaires’ propaganda-line that ultimately regime-change in Moscow (turning it into yet another U.S. ‘ally’ or vassal-nation) is a necessary objective (for those billionaires’ international armaments and extraction firms such as Lockheed Martin and ExxonMobil), it had to affirm that regime-change in Moscow is needed: the U.S.-and-allied lie that Russia invaded Ukraine not as a necessary defensive measure against U.S. missiles becoming able to be placed on Ukraine’s Russian border only 317 miles away from Moscow but instead to expand Russia’s ‘empire’ to include a neighboring nation, the lie that Russia invaded Ukraine for aggressive reasons had to be affirmed: “Everything changed in February.