The eleventh hour [By Zhai Haijun/China.org.cn]

The United States and its European allies are in serious confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, the most dangerous hot spot in today's unsettled world.

Western politicians and the Western media blame Russia for the Ukraine crisis, accusing it of "annexing" Crimea and supporting Donetsk and Luhansk against Kiev. U.S. President Barack Obama declared he would keep putting pressure on Russia with severe economic sanctions until Moscow changes its Ukraine policy.

The Western media are pulling out all the stops demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin. U.S. politicians, notably Hillary R. Clinton, the former secretary of state and 2016 presidential hopeful, even portrayed Putin as an expansionist Hitler who has trampled international law and must be made to "pay a big price."

But all these accusers have misread recent history. Quite a few prominent American analysts have spoken out and in mainstream Western media putting the blame squarely on the United States and its European allies.

Henry Kissinger, in an interview with the German newspaper Der Spiegel, noted that Putin spent billions of dollars on the winter Olympics to show that Russia is a progressive state tied to the West and wants to be part of the West. But Europe and America did not understand this. So Kissinger told Der Spiegel: "If the West is honest with itself, it has to admit that there were mistakes on its side. The annexation of Crimea was not a move toward global conquest. It was not Hitler moving into Czechoslovakia."