On Monday, Ukrainian officials reaffirmed their desire to join NATO after the Ukrainian ambassador to the UK suggested Kyiv was willing to drop its bid to join the alliance to ease tensions with Russia.
Ambassador Vadym Prystaiko told BBC that Ukraine could be “flexible” on the issue of a future NATO membership, but he later walked the comments back. Sergii Nykyforov, a spokesman for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, said Ukraine’s aspirations to join NATO remain a priority.
At the same time, Zelensky appeared to downplay Ukraine’s NATO plans. At a press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, Zelensky said the prospective membership could be “like a dream.”
“How much should Ukraine go on that path?” Zelensky said of a NATO membership, as quoted by The New York Times. “Who will support us?”
Scholz also downplayed Ukraine’s prospective NATO membership. “The question of [Ukrainian] membership in alliances is practically not on the agenda,” the German leader said at the press conference. “And that is why it is strange to observe that the Russian government is making something that is practically not on the agenda the subject of major political problems.”
One of Russia’s primary security demands of the West is for a guarantee from the US and NATO that Ukraine won’t ever join the alliance. The US has rejected the idea of making a formal promise, but President Biden has said it’s unlikely Ukraine will join NATO in the “near term.”
As Alexander Mercouris noted in his video today, it appears the West is trying to divert attention from the overall goals of the Russian treaty proposals by focusing the issue on Ukraine’s membership in NATO and on the ginned-up Russian “invasion” hoax.
The fact remains that this entire crisis began when the Atlantic Council recommended to the Biden administration that Ukraine be fast-tracked into NATO, and then Ukraine adopted the official position that Donbass and Crimea should be reclaimed from Russia, and then moved half its army to the contact line. As The National Interest article I referenced in an earlier thread points out, Russia was well advised to be alarmed at this progression of events.
So what are we to make of these reassurances that Ukraine will “maybe” not join NATO? And I note that Ukraine doesn’t have to join NATO officially. The US and NATO can simply treat Ukraine as if it were in NATO by sending it arms, building up its military, installing missile systems such as THAAD, etc., all of which has been done or is being contemplated and all of which clearly threatens both Donbass and Crimea, and potentially Russia itself.
So once again, everyone is focusing on the wrong question – and being deliberately encouraged to do so. The issue is not Ukraine per se and never was.
Correct. The underlying motive is Nord Stream 2 and Germany (Europe) and its massive eastern trading interests with both China and Russia, joining the gigantic Eurasia Silk Road (B&R Iniative)
Yup. That’s the assessment a lot of people have come to. It always boils down to the money (and the power money brings.)
There is an additional cause. During depressions, especially serious depressions, Russia has been and will continue to be a buffer for German industrial products. Gas for superior agricultural machinery and more.
Putin & Lavrov, the Russians, arecapable of a god’s eye perspective: the US behavior is overdetermined and therefore inexorable. The ideology/theology of Manifest Destiny, its latest iteration The Project for a New American Century, has formed the ethos of the US since Winthrop’s “city on a hill”; and, at the same time, has built up a warfare state in service to this “call” which now compasses an immense and vastly articulated structure consisting of an hypertrophied military-industrial complex, the United Nations Security Council, NATO and sundry epigonoi, Western mainstream Media, a huge think-tank industry, nearly every major university physics, chemistry, math, engineering, political science, economics, and business school in the West, a symbiotic banking system, subservient judiciary, and omniscient intel apparatus. The problem comes in the fact that it has become automatous, and with an unstoppable momentum. The solution lies in the recognition that its efficient cause is no longer an exalted vocation but internal corruption. It has blinded itself and become so gross its actions are feckless, if destructive. Eventually it will sink of its own necrosis; but in the meantime it needs to be avoided mainly, and pricked away when it gets too close. Thence Putin showed the gun and poker face, and it worked.
how dumb are the Ukrainians. they simply don’t get it. I also must assume that it is the USA which is whispering nonsense like this joining nato thing into Zelensky’s ear
Russia will never never ever ever allow that country to join NATO. ever. why can’t the West realize this and accommodate the Russians and allow the Ukraine to be a relatively neutral country like Finland or Austria etc etc
do we really have to have a near nuclear war about all this?
The Ukrainians know their country is so corrupt they have no way out of the economic mess they’re in. They think joining the EU will dump loads of cash their way. What they forget is that it would all be stolen by the oligarchs anyway, so nothing would change. In a way, they’re a miniature version of the United States which is in the exact same position, just on a higher level. Except our electorate is still making enough money to be middle class – for a while – maybe not a long while – so we don’t acknowledge this.
The EU cannot easily supply Ukraine with oil and gas and it is unlikely that Ukraine will soon be totally “green”.
I was always under the impression that if a country applied fr NATO membership that all 27 (?) member states have to unanimously agree on this. I believe that some NATO members like France, Italy and even Germany are not so keen on Ukraine joining the Alliance.
Correct.
And even more so now that US hegemony is fading and the Eurasian future looming.
“The only constant is change.” Heraclitus 430 BC
Facts: in 1941, when Barbarossa began, Hitler’s tanks were about 1000 miles from Moscow. If Ukraine becomes a NATO member the distance for tanks of Russia’s enemies will be reduced to about 500 miles.
Worse: the distance for land-based ballistic missiles will also be reduced by about a factor two which means a greatly reduced warning time for Moscow.
For such a threat there is only one answer possible: war.
Keep in mind that Ukraine is a puppet state. Nobody in that regime can so much as use the toilet in his own hose without getting permission first.