In 2008, NATO made an unequivocal declaration: Ukraine and Georgia "will become members of NATO." Fourteen years later, Russia invaded Ukraine, setting in motion a devastating war, transforming European security and generating hundreds of billions of dollars in military expenditure.
INR Report: Based on remarks by Robert F. Kennedy Jr, examined against declassified diplomatic records, NATO documents, Ukrainian parliamentary records, corporate filings, Council of Europe findings and published research into the 2014 Maidan violence.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr begins his argument about Ukraine with a proposition that remains fiercely disputed: this was a war that did not have to happen. "It's a war that should have never happened," Kennedy says. "It's a war the Russians tried repeatedly to settle on terms that were very, very beneficial to Ukraine and us." He then identifies what he regards as the central strategic issue: "The major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of the Ukraine."
Kennedy's version compresses more than three decades of history into a few sentences. Yet one fact deserves particular attention. On 3 April 2008, at its Bucharest Summit, NATO's heads of state and government formally declared of Ukraine and Georgia: "We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO."
The significance of those words is difficult to overstate. This was not a Russian interpretation of Western intentions, a leaked diplomatic conversation or speculation about what NATO might eventually do. It appeared in NATO's official summit declaration. Ukraine did not receive immediate membership or a Membership Action Plan, but NATO had publicly stated the intended destination: Ukraine would eventually become part of the Western military alliance.
For NATO, the declaration represented the principle that sovereign countries should be free to choose their own security arrangements. For many Ukrainians, particularly after the events of 2014, NATO increasingly represented potential protection against Russian military power. Moscow viewed precisely the same development from the opposite direction. Successive Russian governments had opposed NATO's movement eastward since the 1990s, and Ukraine, with its extensive Russian border, Black Sea coastline and deep historical, economic and military connections to Russia, represented a particularly sensitive strategic threshold.
The confrontation that erupted into full-scale war in February 2022 therefore did not begin in February 2022. Its roots reach back into the settlement that followed the Cold War.
The Promise at the End of the Cold War
When the Berlin Wall fell and German reunification became inevitable, Washington, Moscow and the major European powers confronted an extraordinary question. Soviet control over Eastern Europe was collapsing, the Warsaw Pact was beginning to unravel and Germany was moving towards reunification. What would happen to NATO?
On 9 February 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker met Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow. A declassified American memorandum records Baker discussing the possibility of a reunified Germany remaining within NATO while telling Gorbachev there would be no extension of NATO's jurisdiction "one inch to the east." That phrase would eventually become one of the most contested sentences in the history of the post-Cold War settlement.
Importantly, Baker's remark did not occur in isolation. Declassified American, Soviet, German, British and French documents assembled by the National Security Archive at George Washington University show Western leaders repeatedly addressing Soviet concerns about NATO's future geographical reach during negotiations over German reunification. German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher publicly discussed NATO not expanding eastward. Chancellor Helmut Kohl subsequently reassured Gorbachev about Soviet security interests, while other Western officials considered what NATO's role should become as the Warsaw Pact disappeared.
Professor Jeffrey Sachs has placed considerable emphasis on this documentary record. Sachs argues that Soviet acceptance of German reunification inside NATO occurred within a broader political understanding that the West would not exploit the collapse of Soviet power by progressively moving NATO towards Russia's borders.
There is, however, an important distinction between political assurances and a binding legal agreement. The final Two Plus Four settlement governing German reunification did not contain a permanent prohibition against Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia or other Central and Eastern European countries eventually joining NATO. Its binding restrictions concerned Germany, particularly the territory of the former East Germany.
NATO consequently maintains that no legally binding promise prohibiting future enlargement was made. The documentary record nevertheless establishes that Soviet concerns about NATO moving east were being discussed at the highest levels and that Western officials gave significant assurances concerning Soviet security.
The historical position is therefore more nuanced than either extreme suggests. There is documentary evidence of Western political assurances concerning NATO's eastward movement. There is no signed treaty permanently prohibiting NATO enlargement throughout Eastern Europe.
That distinction would become increasingly consequential as the map of Europe changed.
NATO Moves East
The Warsaw Pact dissolved in 1991. The Soviet Union itself ceased to exist in December that year, and the Russian Federation emerged as its principal successor state. For a brief historical moment, the military division of Europe that had defined the previous four decades appeared capable of disappearing with the Cold War.
NATO instead survived and expanded.
Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic joined in 1999. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia followed in 2004. Albania and Croatia entered in 2009, Montenegro in 2017 and North Macedonia in 2020. Following Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Finland joined in 2023 and Sweden in 2024.
The geographical transformation was unmistakable. Former Warsaw Pact countries entered NATO, while Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, which had themselves been republics of the Soviet Union, became NATO members. The alliance had moved substantially east from its Cold War footprint.
Yet those countries cannot accurately be treated as passive pieces on a geopolitical chessboard. Many actively sought membership. Poland and the Baltic states in particular regarded their historical experiences with Russian and Soviet power as compelling reasons to seek NATO protection.
This produced a security dilemma that would become progressively more dangerous. What Poland, Estonia or Latvia considered protection from Russia could simultaneously be perceived in Moscow as an opposing military alliance moving closer to Russian territory.
Then came Bucharest.
2008: NATO Draws a Line Towards Ukraine
At NATO's April 2008 Bucharest Summit, Ukraine and Georgia sought a clearer route towards membership. France and Germany resisted immediately placing them on a Membership Action Plan, partly because of concerns over Russia and questions about whether the countries were ready.
The compromise produced something historically remarkable. Ukraine and Georgia did not receive the immediate formal pathway they sought, but NATO's leaders nevertheless declared:
"We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO."
There was little ambiguity in the destination.
For NATO, Moscow could not be permitted to determine the alliances of neighbouring sovereign countries. For Russia, the Western military alliance whose expansion it had opposed for years had now publicly announced its intention to incorporate Ukraine.
The importance of Bucharest is not that the declaration entitled Russia to invade Ukraine. It did not. Its importance is that fourteen years before the 2022 invasion, NATO had formally declared that Ukraine would become a member, and Russian opposition to that possibility was already well established.
Six years later, Ukraine itself would be transformed.
Maidan: Ukraine's Political Earthquake
In late 2013, Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych suspended preparations to sign an association agreement with the European Union and instead pursued closer economic relations with Russia. Demonstrations began in Kyiv's Independence Square, the Maidan, and developed into a much larger movement against Yanukovych's government.
For supporters of the movement, Euromaidan became a democratic uprising against corruption and authoritarian government and a demand that Ukraine turn towards Europe. For Moscow and many of Yanukovych's supporters, it increasingly appeared to be a Western-supported effort to remove an elected government and pull Ukraine decisively out of Russia's sphere of influence.
The United States was not a passive observer.
Senior American officials were deeply engaged with Ukrainian political actors during the crisis. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland travelled to Kyiv, met opposition leaders and became one of Washington's most visible officials dealing with Ukraine.
Then a private telephone conversation between Nuland and US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked.
"I Think Yats Is the Guy"
The Nuland-Pyatt conversation provides one of the clearest windows into the degree of American involvement in Ukraine's political crisis.
The two American officials discussed leading opposition politicians and the political configuration they believed could work in a future Ukrainian government. Nuland expressed reservations about opposition leader Vitali Klitschko entering government at that stage and said of Arseniy Yatsenyuk:
"I think Yats is the guy."
The significance lies not merely in the phrase itself but in the conversation surrounding it. Two senior American officials were privately discussing which Ukrainian opposition figures should occupy positions in a prospective political arrangement while Viktor Yanukovych remained Ukraine's elected president.
That is considerably more than detached diplomatic observation.
It does not, by itself, establish that Washington controlled the Maidan movement or orchestrated Yanukovych's eventual removal. Ukraine had enormous domestic political divisions, mass demonstrations involving Ukrainians acting for their own reasons, and opposition leaders with their own ambitions.
But the recording demonstrates that Washington was actively attempting to influence the political outcome.
The subsequent history made the conversation still more striking.
Arseniy Yatsenyuk became prime minister after Yanukovych lost power.
The Week That Changed Ukraine
The crisis reached its violent climax in February 2014. Protesters and police had already been killed during escalating confrontations, but on 20 February gunfire transformed the political landscape.
Dozens of protesters were killed and many more wounded. Police officers were also shot.
Images of dead and wounded protesters spread around the world, rapidly intensifying pressure on Yanukovych's government. Responsibility for the killings became one of the most consequential questions in modern Ukrainian history.
The dominant account attributed the killing of protesters primarily to government security forces, particularly members of the Berkut special police.
But the complete story of the shootings has remained contested.
Who Fired on Maidan?
Political scientist Ivan Katchanovski has spent years examining synchronized videos, witness testimony, ballistic evidence, medical evidence, court proceedings and the locations from which shots were reportedly fired.
His peer-reviewed 2023 study in Cogent Social Sciences argues that evidence supports the involvement of elements associated with the Maidan opposition and far-right groups in shooting both protesters and police from Maidan-controlled buildings and locations.
That is a major claim and it remains disputed.
It should therefore not be presented as established fact that opposition forces organised the massacre, any more than the unresolved evidence should simply be omitted.
What can be stated independently is that serious deficiencies subsequently emerged in the investigation.
The Council of Europe's International Advisory Panel reviewed Ukraine's investigations into the Maidan violence and concluded in 2015 that they had, in many respects, failed to satisfy European Convention on Human Rights requirements. The Panel identified problems with independence and effectiveness and criticised failures of cooperation involving the Ministry of Interior and Security Service of Ukraine.
It also concluded that serious investigative deficiencies had undermined the authorities' ability to establish the circumstances of the Maidan crimes and identify those responsible.
That finding matters.
The Council of Europe did not conclude that opposition snipers committed the massacre. Nor did it conclude that the CIA or NATO organised the shootings.
But an international review did conclude that serious deficiencies impaired the investigation into one of the decisive events leading to the collapse of Yanukovych's government.
The unresolved questions therefore deserve investigation rather than dismissal.
What Can Be Said About US Involvement?
This is where precision becomes particularly important.
Victoria Nuland was a senior US State Department official. She was not a CIA officer, and publicly available evidence examined for this report does not establish that she directed a CIA operation to carry out the Maidan uprising or the shootings.
Nor does the evidence examined establish that NATO organised the Maidan violence.
What is documented is substantial enough without making those additional claims.
The United States was deeply involved diplomatically and politically during the crisis. Senior US officials met opposition leaders. Nuland and Pyatt privately discussed the preferred composition of a future Ukrainian government. Washington openly supported Ukraine's movement towards Western institutions.
Those facts establish political intervention and influence.
Whether they amount to a US-directed "regime change" operation is an interpretation that remains contested, particularly because the Maidan movement involved large numbers of Ukrainians with genuine domestic grievances against Yanukovych's government.
The distinction is crucial.
Ukrainian agency and American intervention are not mutually exclusive.
Yanukovych Falls
On 21 February 2014, Yanukovych and opposition leaders signed an agreement intended to end the crisis, providing for constitutional reforms and an early presidential election.
The arrangement collapsed almost immediately.
Yanukovych left Kyiv. On 22 February, Ukraine's Verkhovna Rada adopted a resolution declaring that he had withdrawn from performing his constitutional duties and scheduled an early presidential election for May.
The official parliamentary vote was overwhelming: 328 deputies voted for the resolution, none voted against and none abstained among those voting.
Supporters of the transition regard these events as the culmination of a popular revolution after Yanukovych abandoned his responsibilities.
Critics describe them as an unconstitutional overthrow carried out under the pressure of street violence.
The Rada's own resolution used unusual language. It declared that Yanukovych had, "in the non-constitutional manner," withdrawn from performing his constitutional powers.
This distinction is important because Ukraine's constitutional procedures for formally removing a president through impeachment involved additional steps that were not followed through to completion.
The political reality, however, moved faster than the constitutional argument.
Yanukovych was gone.
And Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the politician Nuland had described weeks earlier as "the guy," became prime minister.
From Maidan to Crimea and Donbas
The collapse of Yanukovych's government radically altered the strategic environment.
Russia moved rapidly in Crimea, where Russian forces took control and Moscow subsequently annexed the peninsula following a referendum rejected by Ukraine and much of the international community.
Conflict then erupted in eastern Ukraine. Russian-backed separatists seized territory in parts of Donetsk and Luhansk, while Kyiv launched military operations to restore government control.
The political crisis had become an internationalised armed conflict.
NATO's relationship with Ukraine simultaneously deepened. In April 2014 NATO announced that it would intensify cooperation with Kyiv and implement measures intended to strengthen Ukraine's ability to provide for its own security. By August, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen was in Kyiv discussing deeper cooperation and reforms to Ukraine's armed forces and defence institutions.
The 2008 promise had not resulted in Ukrainian NATO membership.
But after 2014, military cooperation moved steadily closer.
Eight Years Before the Full-Scale Invasion
The period from 2014 to 2022 is sometimes compressed into a prelude to the present war, but for people living in eastern Ukraine it was already a war.
Thousands were killed as Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists fought across the Donbas. The Minsk agreements attempted to construct a political and military settlement, but fighting continued and the political provisions were never fully implemented.
During the same period, NATO countries trained Ukrainian forces, supplied equipment and assisted with military reform. Ukraine's armed forces became considerably more capable and increasingly interoperable with Western militaries.
From Kyiv's perspective, this assistance became increasingly necessary because Ukraine had already lost Crimea and was fighting Russian-backed forces in the east.
From Moscow's perspective, the process looked increasingly like the gradual military integration of Ukraine into NATO structures without formal membership.
Again, the same developments produced radically different interpretations.
By the end of 2021 those competing security narratives were colliding.
2022: Neutrality Returns to the Table
Russia invaded Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
The invasion was Moscow's decision and represented a massive escalation of the conflict. But explaining why Russia acted is a separate question from determining whether the invasion was lawful or justified.
Within weeks, Russian and Ukrainian negotiators were discussing a settlement.
During talks in Istanbul in March 2022, Ukraine proposed abandoning its pursuit of NATO membership and accepting permanent neutrality in exchange for international security guarantees. The proposals contemplated Ukraine remaining non-nuclear and non-aligned while preserving its route towards membership of the European Union.
The historical circle was remarkable.
In 1990, Soviet leaders had raised concerns about NATO moving east.
NATO subsequently expanded east.
In 2008, NATO declared that Ukraine would become a member.
In 2014, Ukraine's government was transformed following Maidan, Russia took Crimea, war began in the Donbas and NATO cooperation with Ukraine intensified.
Then, in 2022, as Russian and Ukrainian negotiators attempted to stop a full-scale war, Ukrainian neutrality was once again at the centre of negotiations.
This provides support for an important part of Kennedy's argument.
It does not establish his entire case. Russia and Ukraine remained divided over territory, Ukrainian military capabilities, occupied regions and the nature of security guarantees. The evidence does not establish that a completed peace agreement favourable to Ukraine was simply waiting for signatures.
But NATO and neutrality were unquestionably part of the diplomatic equation.
Kennedy then asks another question.
What economic system had grown around that security confrontation?
From NATO Expansion to NATO Spending
"The big military contractors want to add new countries to NATO all the time," Kennedy says. "Why? Because then that country has to conform its military purchases to NATO weapon specifications."
He names Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing and Lockheed Martin.
NATO membership does not require countries to purchase weapons from those particular American companies. National governments retain procurement authority and European manufacturers compete heavily for NATO contracts.
But Kennedy's broader economic mechanism deserves examination.
NATO members participate in integrated defence planning involving capability targets, readiness, interoperability and standardisation. Their armed forces must be capable of communicating and operating together. Aircraft exchange information, communications networks require compatibility, ammunition and weapons systems must function within allied military structures, and logistics systems need to support multinational operations.
Membership increasingly also carries enormous financial commitments.
At NATO's 2014 Wales Summit, members agreed that countries spending less than 2 percent of GDP on defence would move towards that level. They also committed to moving towards spending at least 20 percent of defence budgets on major new equipment and associated research and development where that benchmark was not already being achieved.
Then came another dramatic increase.
At NATO's 2025 Hague Summit, members committed to investing 5 percent of GDP annually by 2035 in defence and defence-related expenditure. At least 3.5 percent is intended for core defence requirements and NATO capability targets, with up to another 1.5 percent available for wider defence and security-related expenditure.
Direct contributions supporting Ukraine's defence and defence industry can count towards the commitment.
The financial implications are immense.
The Market Created by Alliance
The economic sequence is straightforward. NATO enlargement increases the number of countries participating in the alliance's defence system. Defence commitments increase national military expenditure. Capability targets identify requirements. Standardisation and interoperability influence equipment choices. Governments procure weapons and supporting systems, and defence manufacturers compete for the resulting contracts.
American corporations including Lockheed Martin, RTX, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics and Boeing participate heavily in that market. So do European manufacturers including Rheinmetall, BAE Systems, Leonardo, Thales, Saab and Airbus.
This does not demonstrate Kennedy's contention that defence companies cause NATO expansion. Countries seek NATO membership for political and security reasons, and accession requires agreement among existing members.
But the commercial incentive is clear.
A larger alliance spending more money on interoperable military capability creates a larger market for companies selling that capability.
Ukraine and the American Defence Industry
Kennedy next turns to former US Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell. "Mitch McConnell was asked, can we really afford to spend $113 billion in Ukraine?" Kennedy says. "He said, don't worry. It's not really going to Ukraine. It's going to American defence manufacturers."
Kennedy then adds his interpretation: "So he just admitted it's a money laundering scheme."
The phrase "money laundering" is rhetorical and is not established by the financial mechanism being described. But that mechanism itself deserves attention.
A substantial portion of US military assistance associated with Ukraine does not arrive in Kyiv as cash. Congressional appropriations can purchase weapons from American manufacturers, replace weapons transferred from existing US inventories, expand production capacity and fund other defence activities inside the United States.
Ukraine receives military capability while substantial portions of the economic activity occur in America. Manufacturers receive contracts, suppliers receive orders, workers receive wages, factories expand and shareholders participate in the financial performance of those businesses.
This is why American politicians can simultaneously describe Ukraine expenditure as assistance to Kyiv and investment in American industry.
Both propositions can be true.
The Economy That Grows Around War
War consumes equipment. Governments replace equipment. Production lines expand. New contracts are signed. Perceived threats encourage larger defence budgets, while larger budgets sustain greater industrial capacity.
A feedback loop develops around military expenditure.
This does not mean defence manufacturers created the threat or engineered the war. Russia's invasion itself drove European governments to increase military expenditure and persuaded Finland and Sweden to join NATO after decades outside the alliance.
But the financial consequences remain real. Companies whose revenues depend upon military procurement have an economic interest in larger defence budgets and larger markets.
War creates catastrophic human and economic losses.
It can simultaneously create identifiable commercial winners.
BlackRock and the Defence Industry
Kennedy then takes the argument further. "And who do you think owns every one of those companies? BlackRock."
BlackRock is a major institutional shareholder in numerous defence corporations, but it does not own those companies in the conventional meaning of the word. BlackRock-managed funds hold substantial minority positions alongside other enormous institutional investors, particularly Vanguard and State Street.
These asset managers appear repeatedly among the largest shareholders of major publicly traded corporations because their investment products hold shares on behalf of millions of underlying investors. Their scale can provide significant institutional and voting influence, but that differs materially from outright ownership.
Kennedy's wording therefore overstates the relationship.
There is nevertheless a broader issue. The concentration of enormous pools of investment capital among a relatively small number of global asset managers means the same institutions can hold significant positions across defence, technology, banking, energy, agriculture and infrastructure simultaneously.
That becomes particularly relevant when the discussion moves from financing war to financing what comes afterwards.
Ukraine's Agricultural Wealth
Kennedy argues that Ukraine was required to place government-owned assets up for sale to multinational corporations and identifies agricultural land as one of the country's greatest assets. He names DuPont, Cargill and Monsanto as buyers.
Ukraine's agricultural importance is beyond dispute. Its fertile black soils have made it one of the world's major agricultural producers and exporters, and international corporations have long participated in its agricultural economy.
But the specific claim that multinational corporations simply purchased Ukraine's agricultural land under wartime loan conditions is not supported by the evidence examined for this report.
Ukraine began liberalising its agricultural land market before Russia's 2022 full-scale invasion. Foreign businesses participate through financing, leases, corporate structures, agricultural inputs, processing and supply chains, but Ukrainian law restricts direct foreign ownership of agricultural land unless such ownership is approved through a national referendum.
Foreign corporate participation and direct foreign ownership of Ukrainian farmland are therefore not interchangeable claims.
BlackRock and the Reconstruction Opportunity
Kennedy's final BlackRock argument contains another documented relationship but overstates its meaning. "And then in December, President Biden gave out the contract to rebuild Ukraine," he says. "And who do you think got that contract? BlackRock."
BlackRock unquestionably became involved in planning Ukraine's reconstruction. BlackRock Financial Markets Advisory entered an arrangement with Ukraine's Ministry of Economy to advise on designing an investment framework capable of attracting public and private capital. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky subsequently discussed reconstruction investment with BlackRock chief executive Larry Fink.
That relationship is significant, particularly given the potential scale of reconstruction.
But it is not equivalent to President Biden awarding BlackRock a blanket contract to rebuild Ukraine. The documented relationship was an advisory arrangement involving BlackRock and the Ukrainian government.
The distinction matters because BlackRock's actual role is substantial enough to examine without exaggerating it.
Follow the Capital, But Follow It Accurately
BlackRock occupies an extraordinary position within global finance. Funds managed by the company hold investments across defence, energy, agriculture, technology, infrastructure and thousands of publicly traded corporations.
That scale creates an analytical trap. Finding BlackRock among the shareholders of companies benefiting from government policy is not unusual, and similar patterns appear with Vanguard and other giant asset managers.
A shareholding establishes a financial interest. It does not by itself demonstrate control over the government policy producing the financial return.
The causal relationship must be demonstrated separately.
The same standard applies throughout the Ukraine story. Defence companies benefiting from NATO expansion does not prove they caused NATO expansion. Companies benefiting from war does not prove they caused war. Reconstruction companies preparing for opportunities in Ukraine does not prove they sought Ukraine's destruction.
But refusing to infer causation without evidence should not become an excuse for refusing to follow the money.
The Road to War Was Longer Than 2022
The historical chain now looks considerably different from a narrative beginning on 24 February 2022.
At the end of the Cold War, Western officials discussed Soviet concerns about NATO's future eastern reach and offered political security assurances, although no treaty permanently prohibiting NATO enlargement was signed.
NATO subsequently expanded into much of Central and Eastern Europe.
In 2008, NATO explicitly declared that Ukraine and Georgia would become members.
In 2014, the United States was deeply engaged in Ukraine's political crisis, with senior American diplomats privately discussing the composition of a possible future Ukrainian government. The Maidan uprising culminated in killings whose investigation was subsequently found by the Council of Europe to suffer serious deficiencies. Yanukovych lost power, Arseniy Yatsenyuk became prime minister, Russia seized Crimea and war erupted in the Donbas.
NATO then intensified its cooperation with Ukraine.
Eight years of conflict followed.
In 2022 Russia launched its full-scale invasion, and when negotiations began shortly afterwards, Ukrainian neutrality and NATO membership again appeared at the centre of discussions.
None of these facts means that any single event mechanically caused the next.
Together, however, they establish that the war emerged from a long-running collision between Ukrainian political choices, Russian security demands, NATO enlargement, Western intervention and influence, Russian intervention and military force, and the unresolved question of where Ukraine would sit in the European security order.
The Business Surrounding War
The strongest version of Kennedy's argument does not require believing that Lockheed Martin secretly controls NATO, that BlackRock owns the Western economy, or that the CIA organised the Maidan shootings.
The documented history is consequential enough.
A military alliance created to contain the Soviet Union survived the Soviet Union's disappearance and expanded into much of its former sphere. NATO then declared that Ukraine would eventually become a member. Washington became deeply involved in Ukraine's 2014 political crisis. Russia responded to the post-Maidan strategic transformation by taking Crimea and supporting separatist forces in the Donbas. Ukraine moved progressively closer to Western military structures.
Those tensions eventually culminated in Russia's 2022 invasion.
The resulting war generated enormous defence expenditure, while NATO governments subsequently committed themselves to even greater military spending. Defence manufacturers benefit from that expenditure and institutional investors participate financially through holdings in those companies.
When the fighting ends, construction companies, banks, asset managers, energy companies, telecommunications providers, agricultural businesses and infrastructure investors will compete within another potentially enormous market.
Reconstruction.
None of this proves that financial interests caused the war.
But the documented history makes another proposition difficult to dismiss: the political institutions making decisions about war and peace operate inside an economic system in which enormous corporate and financial interests can benefit from military expenditure, rearmament and reconstruction.
That deserves scrutiny in any democratic society.
Does This Affect New Zealand?
For New Zealand, this debate extends well beyond Ukraine. New Zealand participates in international security partnerships, contributes military and humanitarian assistance overseas and faces major decisions about future defence capability as strategic competition increases across the Indo-Pacific.
That makes transparency over defence expenditure increasingly important. New Zealanders should be able to distinguish between money transferred directly to another government, military equipment donated from existing stocks, expenditure required to replace that equipment and contracts awarded to domestic or foreign defence manufacturers.
The history of Ukraine also offers a broader lesson. Security arrangements can appear radically different depending on which side of a border they are viewed from. What Poland or Estonia regarded as protection from Russia, Moscow regarded as an opposing military alliance moving towards Russian territory. What many Ukrainians regarded as a democratic revolution in 2014, others regarded as an unconstitutional transfer of power encouraged by Western governments.
Journalism should not be required to choose one description before examining the evidence.
Kennedy's speech mixes documented history and legitimate economic questions with several assertions that extend beyond the evidence. The stronger investigation does not need those weaker claims.
The deeper question remains:
When geopolitical confrontation generates hundreds of billions of dollars in military expenditure, expanding defence markets and eventually enormous reconstruction opportunities, who receives the taxpayers' money, who profits from the policies, and what safeguards ensure that the financial interests created by war do not begin influencing decisions about whether the war continues?
Sources
Primary material: Remarks by Robert F. Kennedy Jr supplied to INR.
Cold War record: National Security Archive, NATO Expansion: What Gorbachev Heard. The archive brings together declassified US, Soviet, German, British and French diplomatic records concerning German reunification, NATO's future and the security assurances discussed with Soviet leaders during 1990 and 1991.
NATO record: NATO, Bucharest Summit Declaration, 3 April 2008. Paragraph 23 contains NATO's explicit declaration concerning Ukraine and Georgia: "We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO."
NATO, Wales Summit Declaration, 5 September 2014. The declaration records the commitment to move towards spending 2 percent of GDP on defence and at least 20 percent of defence expenditure on major new equipment, including associated research and development. It also addresses NATO capability targets, interoperability, standards and defence-industrial cooperation.
NATO, The Hague Summit Declaration, 25 June 2025. NATO members committed to investing 5 percent of GDP annually on core defence requirements and defence and security-related spending by 2035.
NATO, Funding NATO. NATO's explanation of national defence expenditure, equipment spending and the distinction between national defence budgets and NATO's common funding arrangements.
Maidan and the 2014 transfer of power: Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Resolution on self-withdrawal of the President of Ukraine from performing his constitutional duties, 22 February 2014. The official resolution states that Viktor Yanukovych had "in the non-constitutional manner" withdrawn from performing his constitutional powers and scheduled an early presidential election for 25 May 2014.
Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine, Plenary meeting on February 22, 2014. The official parliamentary record states that the resolution concerning Yanukovych was adopted with 328 votes.
Council of Europe, International Advisory Panel's report says Maidan investigations failed to satisfy requirements of European Convention on Human Rights, 31 March 2015. The Panel found serious problems involving independence, effectiveness, resources and cooperation between Ukrainian investigative bodies.
Council of Europe, Full Report of the International Advisory Panel on the Maidan Investigations. The Panel concluded that serious investigative deficiencies had undermined the authorities' ability to establish the circumstances of the Maidan-related crimes and identify those responsible.
Ivan Katchanovski, The "snipers' massacre" on the Maidan in Ukraine, Cogent Social Sciences, Vol. 9, Issue 2, 2023. Katchanovski's peer-reviewed study examines synchronized video, witness testimony, bullet locations and other evidence concerning the shootings and argues for the involvement of Maidan-linked shooters. Its conclusions remain contested and should be read as the author's findings rather than an established international determination.
NATO expansion analysis: Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Speech at the European Parliament. Sachs argues that the declassified record demonstrates a broader political understanding that NATO would not expand eastward following German reunification and the end of the Warsaw Pact. This is Sachs' interpretation of the historical record and should be distinguished from NATO's position that no legally binding prohibition on enlargement existed.
Additional verification: Public records and reporting concerning the 2022 Russia-Ukraine negotiations; Ukrainian government documentation concerning reconstruction investment; corporate disclosures concerning institutional ownership of defence contractors; and documentation concerning Ukraine's agricultural land reforms.
Notes on the 2014 Record
1. Yanukovych and the 328-vote resolution
Ukraine's own parliamentary records provide an important distinction concerning the events of 22 February 2014. The Verkhovna Rada recorded that the resolution declaring Viktor Yanukovych had withdrawn from exercising his constitutional powers was adopted with 328 votes. The resolution itself stated that Yanukovych had "in the non-constitutional manner" withdrawn from performing his constitutional powers.
The significance of the wording should not be overstated in either direction. It is evidence of how Ukraine's parliament formally characterised Yanukovych's absence and the constitutional crisis at the
RFK's Speech Excerpt
"It's a war that should have never happened. It's a war the Russians tried repeatedly to settle on terms that were very, very beneficial to Ukraine and us. The major thing they wanted was for us to keep NATO out of the Ukraine.
The big military contractors want to add new countries to NATO all the time. Why? Because then that country has to conform its military purchases to NATO weapon specifications, which means certain companies, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, General Dynamics, Boeing, and Lockheed get a trapped market. Mitch McConnell was asked, can we really afford to spend $113 billion in Ukraine? He said, "Don't worry. It's not really going to Ukraine. It's going to American defence manufacturers." So he just admitted it's a money laundering scheme.
And who do you think owns every one of those companies? BlackRock. And what are the loan conditions that we impose on them? Number one, an extreme austerity programme, so that if you're poor in Ukraine, you're going to be poor forever. Number two, most important, Ukraine has to put all of its government-owned assets up for sale to multinational corporations, including all of its agricultural land, the biggest single asset in Europe.
In Ukraine, there's been a thousand years of war fought over that land. It's the richest farmland in the world. It's the breadbasket of Europe.
500,000 kids almost, Ukrainian kids have died to keep that land as part of Ukraine. They almost certainly didn't know about this loan condition. The buyers were DuPont, Cargill, and Monsanto.
Who do you think owns all of those companies? BlackRock. And then in December, President Biden gave out the contract to rebuild Ukraine. And who do you think got that contract? BlackRock.
So they're doing this right in front of us. They don't even care that we know anymore, because they know that they can get away with it. And how do they know that? Because they have a strategy.
And that strategy is an old, old strategy, which is they keep us at war with each other. They keep us hating on each other."