West can end fighting in Ukraine tomorrow – Roger Waters

The Pink Floyd co-founder gives RT his view on why the Ukraine conflict continues and what’s behind US foreign policy

Ukrainians can stop dying tomorrow if the US sat down with Russia and made peace, Pink Floyd co-founder and British rock legend Roger Waters told RT in an interview on Friday. Waters said the West seems determined to fight “to the last Ukrainian” because there are fortunes to be made from weapons sales, while American elites wish to rule the world.

“It can be stopped, in my view, tomorrow,” Waters told RT’s Eunan O’Neill. “All it takes is for the Americans to come to the table and say ‘OK, let’s go with the Minsk agreements’. And then it would be over.”

Waters pointed out that the current president of Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky, ran on the platform of upholding the Minsk agreements and ending the civil war that started after the illegal 2014 coup in Kiev, and that 73% of Ukrainians voted for him based on that, “so they didn’t have to have a war.”

“The minute he was elected, someone put a gun to his head, I assume, and he changed his mind and didn’t do any of that,” Waters noted. 

Asked if the West wanted the conflict to end, Waters replied, “No, of course not.”

“No, they have no interest in ending it. They will fight to the last Ukrainian. Or if they do want it to end, why don’t they end it? Because it’s in their hands, always has been. It’s in NATO’s hands, it’s in Joe Biden’s hands – except it’s not, it’s his … whoever pulls his strings’ hands. And they don’t want it to end. There’s huge fortunes to be made,” he added, in reference to billions of dollars’ worth of weapons the US and NATO countries were sending to Kiev.

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Waters has been an outspoken human rights activist for years, saying that his platform is that “all our brothers and sisters, all over the world deserve equal rights irrespective of their ethnicity, religion or nationality,” as outlined by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights – no more, no less.

A montage of alleged “war criminals” featured on his new concert tour ‘This Is Not A Drill’ includes the face of current US President Joe Biden. Waters defended that choice in last week’s interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish, which has gained a lot of traction on social media.

Waters pointed out that the interview was “quite a jovial affair” but what CNN ended up posting was “heavily edited” to remove his views on Ukraine and “make me look like an idiot.”

The rock guitarist is on the record condemning the Russian operation in Ukraine as “a criminal mistake,” but told RT it was “a huge mistake for the Americans to try and push NATO right up to the Russian border” as well.

Circling back to the Minsk agreements, Waters wondered why they have been memory-holed by the media, when the overwhelming majority of Ukrainians voted for peace but got war instead. While he doesn’t speak Russian, Waters noted that he’s done a lot of reading and research, trying to understand the conflict from a global standpoint. 

“I have a dog in the race. My father died in Italy fighting the Third Reich,” he added. 

Commenting on US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s recent visit to Taiwan, Waters told RT that Ukraine and Taiwan are the two hotspots that could trigger the Third World War.

“People don’t take nuclear weapons nearly seriously enough,” he said. 

Elaborating on the history and background of China and Taiwan, Waters wondered why the West was so determined to impose its values on others.

“Why should you decide, you, this colonial settlement in North America, why should you get to decide how everybody else in the world behaves?” he told RT. “They want to rule the world, that is what is so dangerous about American foreign policy.”

You can’t rule the world, Joe Biden. You can’t do it, brother. It’s a fool’s errand.

Yet it would be just as wrong if Russia or China had thousands of military bases spanning the world, as the US does, he pointed out. The key feature of George Orwell’s 1984, he noted, is that the three world powers – Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia – were always at war, even if they constantly changed sides.

Waters, 78, co-founded Pink Floyd in 1965. He was the progressive rock band’s frontman, lyricist and vocalist for years, until he left in 1983 to pursue a solo career. He has also been an advocate against the persecution of WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, Israeli abuses of Palestinians, and social media censorship, among other things.