NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Wednesday that in order for Ukraine to become a NATO member, it must prevail in its war with Russia and become more interoperable with the Western military alliance.
“NATO’s position is that Ukraine will become a member of the alliance, and that position has not changed. But we know that there are at least two things you need to address to make that possible. One is that we need to ensure that Ukraine prevails as a sovereign, independent nation,” Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.
“The second thing we need to address is that when this war ends and Ukraine prevails, then, of course, we need to ensure that we have the highest level of interoperability, that Ukraine is able to move from Soviet-era standards, doctrines, ways of operating their armed forces,” he added.
Stoltenberg said the transition away from Soviet standards has already begun as Ukraine has been flooded with Western military equipment and has been receiving training from the US and other NATO countries. Stoltenberg said the transition will be a long-term process.
“This program is more long-term perspective. That is about, you know, building the institutions, helping with the transition, the interoperability, the standards, the doctrines – all of these things that we need to have in place, also to move towards membership,” he said.
One of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s main motives for invading Ukraine was its potential NATO membership and cooperation with the alliance following the 2014 US-backed coup that ousted Viktor Yanukovych. Before the invasion, Putin sought a guarantee from the US that Ukraine wouldn’t ever join NATO, but the Biden administration refused to engage on the issue.
At the same time, the US and NATO would not give Ukraine any concrete timeline on when it could become a member. “I requested them personally to say directly that we are going to accept you into NATO in a year or two or five, just say it directly and clearly, or just say no,” Zelensky said in March 2022. “And the response was very clear, you’re not going to be a NATO member, but publicly, the doors will remain open.”
Ukraine’s neutrality was Russia’s key demand during peace talks that were held at the very beginning of the war. The Kremlin recently said that it now believes its goals can only be achieved by military means. Stoltenberg’s position on Ukraine’s membership and NATO’s long-term plans for the country likely solidifies that view in Moscow.
Dr Strangeloves grandson. His breath must glow in the dark with the radioactivity.
Dangles NATO carrot in front of Ukraine and sends 100,000 Ukrainians to their death – oh wait, you guys can’t join unless you somehow beat Russia? NATO is the antithesis of peace.
Yes, all NATO WARS are wars of aggression, never did NATO have to defend any NATO member. Russia was no threat to anyone when NATO was created, they kept kicking Russia when it was down after all the suffering of WWII.
Iraq, Libya, Syria and Afghanistan prove how destructive NATO is. They never even touched a NATO member.
The war is about expansion of NATO. He just admitted it.
So if NATO wins, it will expand. If it loses, Russia will stop its expansion.
That is best case for NATO. Putin actually demanded a roll back, last Dec 17, 2021. He wants NATO to keep its original promises, and get out of the Baltic and Poland too.
Stoltenberg Is truly a PoS. He throws a gym instructor in front of an angry bear and says if you make it out alive, you’ll join our exclusive club.
Alternatively, if Ukraine negotiated a peaceful settlement with Russia so that there were no territories in dispute, then NATO could approve Ukraine for membership. But part of any peace treaty will be a requirement by Russia that Ukraine will never attempt to join NATO.
Unless Ukraine defeats Russia and Russia surrenders unconditionally. Which will happen when pigs grow wings and fly.
So I guess that Ukraine will not be joining NATO.
SEEMS LIKE PUTIN SOLVED HIS NATO PROBLEM…!!!!!!!!
I Feel sorry for Ukraine getting conned by the neocons… I’m sending them my best slingshot in a show of support….≥
😂
Is it just me or does NATO behave a bit like an a-hole? Ukraine has to kick Russia’s a– to join?
Their club their rules.
It sounds like Zelensky is going to get the blame for not defeating Russia, not the Neocons, Biden, Clinton, Nuland, Pratt.??? Can anyone here add to this list of U.S. OR European plotters and facilitators who in any way facilitated the maiden coup….????
Well a cynic might say that NATO has set this impossible goal for Ukraine to defeat a much larger foe, but the reward is membership in NATO. IF Ukraine pulls it off, not much need for NATO anymore. IF Ukraine fails we still have a hugely degraded RUssia and a neutralish buffer state between Russia and NATO,, ignoring Finland. A win-win from Natos perspective
Jens Stoltenberg kneels down: “That was a good effort but not good enough, Ukrainian soldier.” Then I die and wake up at the same time. I thought it was just a nightmare!? It turns out it was real all along! (Sarcasm alert)
Delusional , Ukraine won`t win , Putin will play the long game , and bleed the West dry as did the Taliban it took 30 years but they won and kicked NATO`s ass the greatest military alliance the world has ever seen lol
The problem with the “bleeding dry” idea is that Russia’s GDP is a tiny fraction of any one of several of its NATO adversaries’, let alone the whole bunch. And the problem with the Afghanistan comparison is that to the extent that it’s valid at all, Russia is playing the same role in Ukraine that it did in Afghanistan last century and the US played there this century.
You seem to overlook the fact that Russia has a ton of commodities that they can sell to the rest of the world while the bankrupt U.S. and Europe has debt. If the long list of sanctions hasn’t destroyed Russia what gives you the idea that Russia can’t withstand a long conflict. You seem to be confusing the Soviet Union with Russia.
Once a “Soviet”, always a Soviet?…
Well, once a chekist always a chekist anyway.
A long excerpt from a longer article by Tom Luongo is worth considering. Brother Knapp should not focus solely on GDP:
“More than a decade ago I looked at the responses to President Obama cutting Iran out of the SWIFT system as the beginning of the end of the petrodollar system. The goal was to take Iran out of the global oil markets by shutting Iran out from the dominant dollar payment system.
Out of necessity Iran opened up trade with its major export partners, most notably India, in something other than dollars. India and Iran started up a ‘goods for oil’ trade, or as Bloomberg called it at the time, “Junk for Oil.”
The stick of sanctions created a new market for pricing Iranian oil and a way around the monopoly of US dollar oil trading. India, struggling with massive current account deficits because of their high energy import bill, welcomed the trade as a way to lessen the pressure on the rupee.
Iran needed goods. They worked out some barter trade and the first shallow cuts into the petrodollar system were made.
Turkey eventually joined the fray, seeing the opportunity to act as a middle man by accepting gold into its banks from Iran’s customers and settling up with Iran in dollars or whatever.
Turkey was the first country to make gold a 100% reserve asset in defiance of Basel I capital rules to facilitate this trade. Turkey’s gold ‘reserves’ skyrocketed because of this.
More than 10 years later we’re now looking at the lynchpin of the petrodollar, Saudi Arabia, seriously considering taking other currencies for their oil. The petrodollar was never going to die overnight, it was always going to die as the cost of doing business in dollars rose to make using other currencies a better path to buying/selling oil.”
Throughout the course of the war, I’ve noted that it’s producing new non-US/EU-dependent trade blocs which will be advantageous to e.g. Russia, China, and India and disadvantageous to the post-WW2 “order” of US-dominated trade.
The petrodollar is dying off fast. The Middle East petro-states are looking more and more to the east for association/alliance/trade purposes. The US empire is in permanent decline, including economically. It’s going away.
But the US regime and its toady states (e.g. EU/NATO) still have the industrial capacity to outlast Russia in Ukraine. It won’t save their dying empire, but it will cause the decline of the Russian empire to continue as well.
There just aren’t really any good outcomes for the dying empires here.
Because I happen to live on turf claimed by the US empire, that decline — in particular, the thrashing around like a dinosaur who doesn’t know it’s dead yet because the signal hasn’t reached its pea-sized brain — will negatively affect me. I’d rather the US just f*cked off and gave up the empire business. But I know it won’t.
Fair enough. Though we may continue to diverge on what constitutes the Russian “empire”.
At its height, I’d say the Russian empire included the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and the Warsaw Pact.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Pact, a number of those former imperial satrapies have exercised complete or near-complete independence, while others have failed at independence attempts (e.g. Chechnya), still others have been “soft satrapies” that basically took large Russian bribes and did mostly as told (Ukraine until 2014, Kazakhstan, etc.), and e.g. Belarus, which has been and remains an abject, prostrate Russian imperial satrapy.
It was stupid of the US/EU/NATO to interfere with Ukraine’s “soft Russian satrapy” status.
On the other hand, Russia’s failure when it tried to show a strong whip hand with Ukraine is now making other “soft satrapies” like Kazakhstan restive as well. The war is probably hastening rather than slowing Russian imperial decline. If they’d managed another Georgia, the decline might have been slowed/halted for a few more years.
It’s not the USA per se. It’s the DC psychopaths.
The American people bear a lot of responsibility though. They are enablers.
Look into BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) they’ve just overtaken the G7 ‘s combined GDP and is said to be increasing the gap in the future.
There’s talk of a competing new currency arising from their upcoming meeting in Durban around August.
Commodities don’t magically transform themselves into arms, ammunition, and trained troops.
Logistics backed by industrial capacity wins extended “bleed the enemy dry” conventional wars.
And, for the last half-century or so, insurgents win counter-insurgency wars.
If the Russians are smart — and I believe they are — they will secure Donetsk/Luhansk and maybe a land corridor connecting them to Crimea, then declare “victory” and a unilateral ceasefire.
Or they can keep pitting their reduced industrial capacity against opponents who have, and can deliver, more than them, and bleeding the seed corn of their next generation into Ukrainian soil. Which would be stupid. And I don’t think Vladimir Putin is stupid.
It’s NATO that doesn’t have the industrial capacity. That’s been eroded over the last 30 years. NATO countries don’t even have the personal to train people to use the tools to produce munitions.
You conflate GDP with industrial capacity. Russia has it. China has even more. The US has 17% of its GDP as financial services, another 17% as health care. 25% of the US GDP is Federal spending. 11% is States spending. 70%. A huge chunk of the rest is moving consumer goods around.
And the dollar has been gravely damaged by DC stupidity.
Good points but I just don’t agree with you when you say that Russia can’t fight a prolonged war. Although I don’t believe it will be a ‘long war’ as the U.S. hopes it will be, I still don’t see the U.S. and especially Europe as being economic powerhouses at this time. Other than Germany, and they have been badly damaged thanks to the destuction of the pipeline, where is the economic might of the NATO aligned countries coming from? Russia on the other hand is building alliances with countries such as China that are increasing in economic might and are aligning themselves in an increasingly powerful bloc. The U.S. has largely wasted its financialized based economy by increasing debt that many countries going forward will want no part of while Russia will have a commodity based economy that will be backed to some degree by something of value that being Gold or some other combination of ‘real’ value.
I didn’t say that Russia can’t fight a prolonged war.
Russia can fight for as long as it wants.
And when it stops fighting, it will hold less territory than it holds right now, and be much poorer than it was when it started.
We will disagree on that.
Dream on….LOL. What a laugh… We will have to wait to see who ends up where. Russia’s grinding Ukraine down, down, down. and they are reenacting WWII war. What will happen when war moves into weapons technologies of THESE Times in the 2000s???
Good Morning TK 🙂
What’s so good about it 😉
Well, actually, it’s kind of a good week. I finally got my brother’s ashes buried in Wisconsin on Saturday (he died in late January). Getting back home with that job done takes a load off my mind.
Sorry for your loss.
Sad, Thomas.
Your brother will ALWAYS be with you; you’ll feel the weight of him in your heart.
At least so it goes with me.
May he rest in peace.
Well, the US is already ‘dry’ along with 39 trillion in debt and still wastes billions on foreign interventions. And, when a country has nuclear weapons, does it really need a large GDP?
Really? There was a high percentage of Russian speakers with relatives in Afghanistan? And huge historical, religious and cultural ties with Afghanistan’s people?… Who knew?
No. Comparisons with the NATO war on Russia in Ukraine and the Russian Afghanistan war are idiotic.
Yes, yes. Yawn. You keep using the same theme on Russia being “a gas station posing as a nation”. Uh huh. Having ICBM’s, the largest nuclear capability, 5th generation fighter jets. Hypersonic missiles (the US hasn’t any). That has proven earth to orbit space capacity that Western countries are struggling
with.
Some gas station. Did I mention that Russia graduates 3X as many engineers per capita than the USA does?
Btw. The GDP figures are completely irrelevant. Russian makes things and produces natural resources. The EU and USA move things around. It’s been over a year since the “expert’s” claimed Russia was running out of munitions. Nope. Why? Russia has military industrial capacity. NATO doesn’t.
“You keep using the same theme on Russia being ‘a gas station posing as a nation.'”
I’ve heard that phrase/theme used somewhere, but I don’t ever recall using it myself even once, let alone “keeping” using it.
I recall you doing just that. I also recall you comparing Russia to Nigeria. Is your memory convenient on that also?.
I believe I did in fact compare Russia to Nigeria on some metric like per capita GDP.
My memory is neither “convenient” nor “inconvenient.” It’s either correct or faulty. I do not remember ever using the “gas station with nukes” metaphor. If I did, feel free to point out where.
I did make a military comparison: Saddam’s Iraq with inherited nukes. So far, events have tended to confirm that comparison.
Who said: “A gas station with nukes”. I used: “A gas station posing as a nation.”.
Even the West has let it be known that the spigot is not unending if gains are not forthcoming soon.
Given the normal course of conflicts, the ceasefire is getting close when everyone starts feeling the need to say it isn’t happening.
Macron is visiting China with EU chief Ursula Leyen today.
You know the main topic is Ukraine and a ceasefire.
Way too many chickens and only two or three lions or tigers…
Even Finland is more a liability than an asset. One mid sized thermo and they’re all done. The U.S. squandered its primacy fighting nomads and military midgets while Russia and China upped their great gamesmanship with peer nuclear & missile leaps a generation or more ahead. Worst of all, valuable time was squandered that once lost can never be gotten back. Worse than the trillions squandered chasing “terrorists.”
“When they prevail”
Is not the same as categorically stating Boris must return to pre-2014 borders.
The guy at the end is a politician who knows how to give himself some wiggleroom.
Hi ZaSu:
I’m not sure I want to get a visual on that (Boris with a wiggle). 🙂
Lotsa luck with THAT scenario, Doltenburg.
lol.
I not only caller him Doltenburg, but DoltenTURD. But I like him saying the Ukies must defeat Russia. Perhaps Russia could provide everyone a little demonstration of its megaton might to give them some idea of what will be in store along that road, maybe starting with, say, 25 or 50 just offshore. All should remember their dial goes up too. 200….. I feel sorry for all the NATO Gnomes, having a dumb cluck like him bargaining their very existance with Lavrov…!!!!!!!
Great comment Mv 😁
LOL. But I don’t feel sorry for them. They deserve what is coming.
if russia was actually waging a war of aggressive conquest the whole thing would already be over with
Despite the Western visuals, Boris is leaving a lot of stuff standing.
It would be much easier to just go scorched earth and grind the Ukrainian soldiers up with the buildings and surronding landscape.
One might even question the often expressed view in the West that Putin is trying to overrun the entire country instead of the eastern regions he’s occupied for months and is not relinquishing.
“One might even question the often expressed view in the West that Putin is trying to overrun the entire country”
one might
Lavrov has said that they will expand the occupation to keep “Russian areas” beyond the range of ordinance that the west gives to them. So that in theory, If the West/NATO gives them ordnance that can strike Crimea, Russia will want to occupy them from the Sea of Azov all the way to Crimea. That does not constitute an area large enough to support a viable state contigeous with a powerful foe. It leaves a mini-rump, cut off from help with an insufficient tax base to survive.
Zelenski has just returned from Poland where he met Poland’s President Andrzej Duda. Poland is calling for NATO to give Ukraine security guarantees. It is my understanding that they reached an agreement where Poland/Nato would step in and annex West Ukraine if the Kiev regime “greatest counter attack the world has ever seen” fails.
So much for Ukrainian territorial integrity. So after 9 years of occupation by NATO and civil war the US/NATO forces are going to attempt to carve up Ukraine. Best of luck with that.
That would be fine with Russia. Russia is concerned with the East of Ukraine, where predominately Russian-speaking Ukraine citizens live. It would be fine with those in the East.
Dave, I take issue with the term “potential NATO membership” – the term also used in the linked Responsible Statecraft article – to describe NATO’s declared plan for future Ukrainian membership. [emphasis added]
The word “potential” in this context suggests mere possibility – something that could, but will not necessarily, happen.
The problem with characterizing future Ukrainian membership this way is that – from the point of view of both NATO and Ukraine – accession to NATO was not a possibility, but a determined plan:
NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Memorandum did not state that Ukraine might at some future point become a NATO member – it stated that it would become a member;
and Ukraine’s amended constitution did not describe NATO membership as a mere ‘aspiration’ that might or might not be realized – it committed Ukraine to joining.
In other words, NATO membership was not a possibility; it was a plan. After 2008 it was not a question of whether, only of when.
This distinction is critical because it was the West’s and Ukraine’s fixed determination – their declared plan – and their vocal refusal to relinquish that plan, despite warnings by both Russia and western analysts that Ukraine was a ‘red line’ – that made Russia’s invasion so highly likely.
Upshot: versus “potential membership,” planned future membership expresses the political realities underpinning the war in Ukraine. The west’s plan to incorporate Ukraine in NATO is the fundamental stake of this war.
No problem, for Nato, just send the Russians an eviction notice. Maybe when pigs can fly, the Russians will fly off too. Everything is easy when you have hope and faith….. NOT!!!!!
How about “thoughts and prayers”, Mv? 😝
Sounds like a Publisher’s Clearing House contest?
Ukraine will join Nato in hell.
Gee, did all the other NATO countries have to win a war to join?
NATO, that is US, that is the sect that runs it — simply do not care. The more Slavic people die, and preferably by killing each other — the better. Especially those rebelious Orthodox Christians — they are incorrigible. Let’s get Poles into it as well. We are such friends! More Lebensraum, and feeling so righteous in tge orocess?
Hitler was stupid. Eugenics anyone? Why make it a monstrous crimecwhen you can make people love it. Abortions, alternate lifestyles, sex transitioning, identity galore. Perfect and enjoyable way to eliminate pesky families with children, such needy demanding population!
Why bother with Morgentau Plan if you could get Germany to voluntarily and happily deindustrialize. Voluntarily and happily deprive themselves from energy source. There you are. Froendly fascism — ultimate freedom of choice, self destructive but happy.
LOL and chocking… “There you are. Friendly fascism — ultimate freedom of choice, self destructive but happy.”
Hilarious, the U.S. says that Ukraine must move away from Soviet Union standards when the U.S. itself is conducting its domestic affairs with Soviet Union tactics.
Stoltenberg has no shame as long as the money comes in. He knows Ukrainians are not dying to join NATO, they are cannon fodder for US INTERESTS which are regime change for another Yeltsin and a chopped up weak Russia with American control over the nations wealth and resources. That is what Zelensky gets paid for, to produce cannon fodder for Biden. It is BIDEN’s war, he wanted the war going way back to 2014. After all the failures of the neocon’s regime changes Biden is delusional believing that he can succeed against all reason to accomplish it against the popular head of state of the biggest nuclear power next to the USA. The man is demented and so are his neocon advisers.
But as long as there are no body bags with American dead bodies coming home he expects the European young men and women and children to die for his interests.
Biden did more damage to the nation in less than 2 years than any other president in 4 or 8 years. Trump was bad and Biden is worse than W. Bush. The three worst presidents I know of.
What Great confidence they have, sending a welfare case to fight the best armed state on the planet with wands of fiat dollars hot off the keyboards…..!!!!! What could possibly go wrong, or should I change that to “go BANG”….??????
Biden wants NATO to operate in the Pacific region and go to war with him against China. He never gets enough wars.
That does not stop him from wrecking NATO, starting with Germany and the EU economy, the pipeline sabotage compliments the illegal sanctions he forces EU members to impose on others who refuse to sanction Russia. Is that not absolute insanity? Common sense, does Biden know what that is, or Nuland the leader of the gang of four?
How much is it worth to NATO to have the Ukraine in its ranks? How many trillions of dollars – and Ukrainian lives- are ‘worth it’? There was a time- before my eyes were opened- that I thought NATO was a good thing, but now if they’re even considering grooming that cesspit of corruption and thievery even as a possible ‘partner’ my opinion of NATO is about as low as it can get without going into negative numbers. And you, Stoltenberg, KMA.
NATO is irrelevant. Before the outbreak of the current war it had been convincably demonstrated that Ukraine can be turned into an armed camp and host for hostile foreign troops without NATO.
NATO has to go away. It has shown itself to represent the worst aspects of the military-industrial complex. But more than that diplomacy has to be reestablished as the way to settle disputes in Europe. Among other things that means the U.S., with its belligerence and the anti-Russian sentiment that it plants and nurtures in other countries, has to be asked politely to butt out of European affairs
Love your name, Tip!
To let Ukraine into Nato never was the aim. The aim was to make Ukrainians fight the Russians by dangling the prospect of Nato membership in front of them like one dangles a carrot in front of a horse’s nose.
Nato’s problem is that Westerners aren’t very tolerant of large amounts of body bags coming home from the front. Only 3 years after Western leaders promised Gorbachev that Nato would not expand Eastward even by an inch, George Soros had the idea of using manpower from Eastern Europe together with Nato technology to do the fighting.
https://www.georgesoros.com/1993/11/01/toward-a-new-world-order-the-future-of-nato/
Today we can witness in Ukraine just how well Soros’ idea has worked. It appears that in the Western script book this is the sort of cynical idea that is worthy of a true “philanthropist”, as Soros is typically referred to in Western media. It’s an idea straight from hell, where this particular philanthropist is bound to return to in the not too distant future.
Using that logic, I assume if NATO loses this war, NATO will disband.