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The US has been trying to isolate Russia by imposing sanctions, but it has only produced the opposite effect and brought Russia closer to China and other BRICS countries, William Engdahl, author of ‘A Century of War’, told RT.

The US President, Barack Obama, has recently given an interview to CNN where he said that the US “had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine...”

RT: Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has said Obama's words are a clear confirmation of America's involvement in the Ukrainian shift of power. Do you think Washington is responsible for the violence that followed?

William Engdahl: There is no question about it that they are responsible. I think president Obama sadly regrets his wording on the interview last night because he de facto admitted as [Foreign] Minister Lavrov also indicated that the US created a de facto coup d’état, brought neo-Nazis in the power, brought oligarchs in the power to replace oligarchs that were democratically elected at least. They have fed the violence with Blackwater mercenaries with other soldiers that they have been training in various NATO countries and with hundreds of CIA on the ground, special forces on the ground. And this has been documented; people have been captured in the East Ukraine in recent days with the thick London accent. I’ve seen YouTube videos myself.

RT: President Obama also touched upon Washington's role in the Russian economy. He also said that he established effective working relations with former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. Do you think Washington is now determined to bring Russia's economy down?

WE: That is certainly clear. They are determined to balkanize Russia into a de facto dead state over the next few years if they can get away with that… I don’t think they will though. The indication of praise for Medvedev, and Medvedev view is highly significant because many economic advisors around the prime minister happened to have trained in the US, they are the spiritual children of Yegor Gaidar and the IMF shock-therapy mafia that almost virtually destroyed Russia before Putin came at his first term as president and simply drew the line and said, “We have to rebuild Russia.”

So Obama has been very clear, he has tried to send his signal to a pro-free market fraction inside Moscow in the government, in the bureaucracy to try to go against Putin. And that is a very stupid policy. But Washington has been making very many stupid policies of late in Syria, in Iraq, in covert backing for ISIL [Islamic State, IS or ISIS] and now the catastrophe in Ukraine. Washington seems to be very strong in stupidity these days in its foreign policy.

RT: America's key general in Europe has said the US is again contemplating sending lethal aid to Kiev's forces. How could flooding the country with arms impact the conflict?

WE: It certainly won’t help. The illegitimate government... the elections were sham last year. There was a military coup d’état that was sponsored by the CIA and the US Special Forces that brought Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko into power and that’s illegitimate. And the people of Ukraine deserve a genuinely free election to decide who they want to rule over them. And I assure you that they will not vote in a bunch of neo-Nazis and Pravy Sektor [Right Sector] and oligarchs like [President Petro] Poroshenko or the others that are around him.

The situation is the country is being destroyed and the policy is being led by a group of neo-conservatives, the generalists backed by Susan Rice who is a part of a gaggle… Victoria Nuland, Susan Rice and others that were bought into Obama administration as so-called liberal neo-cons or neo-conservatives. And that’s the hawk faction of Dick Cheney and G. W. Bush of the previous administration. They are the same people that are running this war policy on behalf of the US military industrial complex. And they are threatened by the rise of Russia.

Ironically the very economic financial warfare that Washington has launched through the US Treasury in recent months, the sanctions so-called, is an active war, have produced the opposite effect. It’s brought Russia closer to China, it’s brought China closer to Russia, it’s brought an integration among the BRICS countries: Brazil, South Africa, Russia, China and India, it’s brought India and Russia closer together. [It is] so far from isolating Russia.