Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told BBC on Friday that Ukraine is a “de facto” NATO member since it’s equipped with so many of the alliance’s weapons and dismissed the idea that his comments were controversial.
Reznikov said he was confident that Ukraine’s Western backers would supply Kyiv with warplanes and tanks despite some concerns about escalating the war. A day later, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak confirmed he would be sending Challenger 2 tanks.
“This concern about the next level of escalation, for me, is some kind of protocol,” Reznikov said. “Ukraine as a country, and the armed forces of Ukraine, became the member of NATO. De facto, not de jure [by law]. Because we have weaponry, and the understanding of how to use it.”
Reznikov made similar comments earlier this month when he said in an interview on Ukrainian TV that his country was “shedding blood” for a “NATO mission.” His view aligns with that of Russian officials who have repeatedly stated that they are not just fighting a war against Ukraine but also against the US and NATO.
In comments to BBC, Reznikov dismissed the idea that what he was saying is controversial even though it implicates NATO as a direct party to the conflict. “Why [would it be] controversial? It’s true. It’s a fact. I’m sure that in the near future, we’ll become member of NATO, de jure,” he said.
The implication that NATO is directly involved in the war gives Russia a pretext to launch an attack on NATO bases in Europe if it chooses to do so. Right now, there’s no sign that Moscow is looking to take such a step, but as the US and its NATO allies continue to ramp up military aid, further escalation becomes more likely.
“The implication that NATO is directly involved in the war gives Russia a
pretext to launch an attack on NATO bases in Europe if it chooses to do
so.”
That would be an incredibly stupid thing for Putin to do.
‘Stupid’ has a nasty habit of making things worse….
It is US/NATO v. Russia from day one, informed people always knew UKRAINE is cannonfodder, nothing else. De facto or full NATO member makes no difference, after Ukraine NATO, Europe will be cannonfodder for the US.
Biden wants unconditional surrender from Russia.
Biden and the neocons need to learn a lesson, Putin needs to take the war to Washington and NYC , it is the only way the criminals in D.C. learn.
They just had an anti-war protest in NYC. Do you mean few parasites on Fall Street? No need to sacrifice an entire city to get them.
The US bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki when they had already won the war, it was to get the unconditional surrender, as far as I know it was about the Emperors standing. How many people were killed for such a meaningless inherited monarchy. The Americans are not generous in victory, they kick the others when they are down, as they did to Russia.
How many people will get killed before Biden/Zelensky agree to negotiate and end of the war? Biden and American politicians will destroy Ukraine and keep a war like in Afghanistan going to win what? Shock and Awe killed how many civilian Iraqis? Why were the people in Mariupol not allowed to surrender ? Why do they go on and on knowing it is a lost cause???? Putin’s barndoor was open to walk through, Biden said no, fight until the last man standing as long it was not an American and he would not lose votes. The war profiteers sit in Washington and Wall Street.
Not that I want that to happen, but it could, and it is possible.
I agree that US/NATO is willing to waste Ukrainian lives to weaken Russia. But it is paranoid to believe that the US wants unconditional surrender from Russia. The US wants to reduce Russia’s power, not destroy the nation entirely.
Exactly what do you mean by “[taking] the war to Washington and NYC?”
Biden wants regime change and break up Russia, that he can only get with unconditional surrender, it is the existential question. I you don’t know what it means look at Japan and Germany. What it means, Germany and Japan are not sovereign nations. The USA/UK are in the process to destroy Germany for the third time.
Your question, taking the war to Washington and NYC would turn the US in a battlefield and give a taste of what war really feels like, what shock and awe is. The WTC is nothing compared to be destroyed to be saved like the Cpt. said in Vietnam. The US dropped 2 nuclear bombs on Japan when they had won the war already, a war crime. You could read up on it and the years after the bombing, after the US lost on Afghanistan, Biden showed his true colors when he implemented brutal sanctions on the beaten and suffering people and confiscated the people’s money to give it to the victims of the trade center. What despicable people Biden and the neocons and our congress are.
The corrupt Afghan elite, the bloodsuckers, who sold their country had enough wealth to leave the country early enough, they were not fighting for a seat on the planes to get out.
After the wall came down it was western and Russian millionaires who looted Russia until Putin stopped it, that is why they hate Putin and get invited as guests on TV.
If Russia attacked the US there would be no battleground. The US, Russia and the entire world would become a graveyard. And the war would last about an hour.
What is the excuse to make Ukraine and the ME graveyards? There is no excuse for any war, only the profiteers gain, the corporate and government elite gain. That includes the economic wars of sanctions, only normal people pay the price, there children go hungry not a Hunter Biden. Rich kids don’t starve to death, poor children do.
That is what Putin meant when he said there will be no world without Russia. And Russia has what it takes to do it. That is what would happen if USA/NATO attacks Russia.
That is why the USA/NATO won’t attack Russia. But Russia attacked Ukraine and it loks like Russia is about to lose that war. It is Russia, not the US/NATO thatmay launch a nuclear first strike to prevent the further decline of the Russian empire. Why do you think Putin’s regime is worth preserving? It is just another imperial system..
Look the USA attacked Iraq based on nothing but lies, turning Iraq in a failed state, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis maimed, and killed. Why do you think the Biden regime is worth saving? Russia did not attack the USA or any NATO nation, Russia had a perfectly rational need of border security. NATO armed and trained and funded Ukrainian military, USA/NATO deceived Russia. Obama/Biden funded and organized the bloody regime change of an elected government in Ukraine, a routine way to take control of a state, the USA controls Ukraine, the USA started the war. Deal with it, these are the facts, you are not informed. The USA attacked Ukraine and Russia, Ukraine is nothing but cannonfodder to serve Biden’s war.
President Putin is a statesman, he has been elected by the Russian people and has a very high approval rating, deal with it.
Normally the little dog knows how stupid it is to provoke the big dog. Ukrainian neo-Nazis were stupid they thought they had a blanc check from the US/NATO.
In the end uncle Sam will be generous and pays them well, the Ukrainian people are just out of luck, millions already fled the country and will not come back.
The Russian people think Russia is worth preserving, and what you and I think is of no consequence, it is their motherland and has been for more than a thousand years, much longer than the US is yours.
Biden’s regime is not worth preserving, actually the country belongs to the American Indian people, and look what a mess it is in. The country is rundown and has really the ugliest cities.
That also explains why N. Korea and Iran need nuclear weapons, the US can’t be trusted.
The same goes if the USA/NATO would attack Russia. Do the neocons get it? Biden and the neocons have poor judgement, that is why we have the debacle.
What do you think would happen to the American AFB in Ramstein , Germany, why not the same in Washington or London? You have a double standard, the USA is the aggressor not the victim.
Russia is the aggressor and Ukraine the victim.
No, it would end the North American Terrorist Occupation of Europe.
It doesn’t even need to be a nuclear strike. Kremlin have enough resources in US and England to do simple pest control. All they need to do is kill few hundred top parasites and the entire Anglo-American empire will fall.
If you believe assassinating a few hundred members of the ruling class would destroy the Anglo-American empire, you are wrong.
Do you have anything substantial to back that up? Like, what exactly do you base your theory on?
It’s your infantile theory that assassinating a few hundred plutocrats would end US/UK imperialism. Get real.
It isn’t a theory. It’s fact. The puppet politicians will not survive without their masters. They simply can’t function on their own.
Exterminating these parasites should be the top priority for any freedom loving human.
“All they need to do is kill few hundred top parasites and the entire Anglo-American empire will fall.”
A lot of anarchists convinced themselves of that in the 19th century.
Gavrilo Princip apparently thought something of the sort in 1914, too.
Never quite works out the way intended.
The Anglo-American empire will fall of its own accord and in its own due time. As will the Russian empire. Which will completely bite the dust first? Who knows? And why is it important?
There was no Anglo-American empire 100 years ago. Just English empire and Russian empire. Both are gone. No matter how much you want to believe it, USSR or Russian Federation is not Russian empire.
The Russian empire is a much better option than letting all the shithead nationalists run wild. Most of the post-Soviet republics are corrupt, dysfunctional kleptocracies. They were better off being part of the Russian empire.
You are right, but what is important to remember: Russian Empire and USSR were not the same as western empires. In Russian Empire there were no colonies and no racism. Armenians, Georgians, Bashkirs and others joined Russian Empire by their own free will and they had the same rights as Russians. May be, if, for example, US would offer to Latin Americans to unite with US and have the same rights as US citizens, Latin Americans also would agree to such a proposition.
“In Russian Empire there were no colonies and no racism.”
Ever heard of the Pale of Settlement?
Did you ever heard that there were restrictions of free movement for Russian peasants to Siberia as well. Russian Empire had different duties and restriction for different estates (castes). It has nothing to do with the colonialism or racism.
If you want to learn more about Pale of Settlement, look the biographies of different J… who are born in Russia. Many of them are born in Russian towns far from that area. For example, mother of Lenin was born in St Peterburg, Sverdlov was born in Nizhniy Novgorod on Volga etc.
A lot of Moscow and St Peterburg journalists at the beginning of 20th century were also J… . There are a lot of Bolshevik propaganda and exaggerations about this. All Bolshevik anti-Russian propaganda (the same as Nazi anti-Russian propaganda) is carefully repeated by western media.
Che Guevara and Lenin would have said that the people of the various nations comprising the Russian empire have the right to determine whether or not they would be better off independent or as a province or protectorateof the Russian Federation. In 1991 Ukrainians voted 90% for independence in a referendum with 84% participation. The success of the Ukrainian resistance is further proof that the Ukrainians still want their independence.
Yes, Ukrainians deserve an independent country, but not as a hotbed of anti-Russian nationalism and an outpost of NATO. The Maidan coup turned Ukraine into a NATO outpost. And immediately after the coup, the Ukrainian nationalists introduced laws against the Russian language, began renaming streets after Nazi collaborators and war criminals, etc. Russians were being turned into an oppressed minority on their own land where they had lived for centuries. This was bound to create conflict.
Ukraine is an example of how nationalists in the post-Soviet republics have mismanaged and abused their independence. And the success of the Ukrainian resistance is mainly due to NATO support. Without it, Ukraine would have been defeated within weeks. So Ukraine is merely a client state of NATO, not an independent coumtry.
You may look in Wikipedia, Referendum for keeping USSR as one state, March 1991.
Ukrainians voted 71% for USSR, 29% against.
Seems to be a mistake to try to equate situations parked that far apart in time, as means to ends have substantially changed.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if governments could be decapitated, as voting has obviously proved itself completely inadequate.
I should add that the past 40 years have removed all this person’s doubt that we have a functioning democracy where voting has a lasting significant impact on national policy.
It would depend on what the circumstances were……
The Russian MOD is fighting a very successful war of attrition disarming NATO (Ukraine was disarmed in March), tank by tank, artillery by artillery, air defense by air defense. Poland has called up 200,000 reserves, Ukraine is collapsing and Poland/Romania are now being called up to die for empire. What the empire looses in the Ukraine, they loose for the final NATO war against Russia.
NATO overall has accumulated the following equipment losses;
372 Aircraft, 200 helicopters, 2880 UAV’s, 400 Anti Aircraft systems, 7511 tanks inc. APC’s, 982 multiple rocket launchers, 3828 rocket launchers and 8040 military automotive equipment.
In the past year we have seen the Rules Based Order act in a state of criminal insanity. They blew up the Nord Stream Pipeline which will cause the deindustrialisation of Europe. The shelling the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Station in an effort to cause a nuclear accident. The planning of a false flag nuclear weapon detonation on their own soil!!! This is the actions of criminally insane psychopaths.
Trusting the Russian MoD figures probably not the smartest thing to do – as they have even according to their own estimates of Ukrainian aircraft strength destroyed more planes than the Ukrainians had and the Ukrainians have not had any delivered so… yea they are lying.
A better source for estimates of equipment losses is likely ORYX – their figures contain only visually confirmed losses so actual losses are somewhat higher you can look up the pictures of the equipment on their site link provided at the end.
Ledgend: Rus=Russia, Ukr=Ukraine,
Lost=Destroyed+Captured, D/A=Damaged+Abandoned
Country___________________________________Rus___Rus____Ukr____Ukr
Sources:__________________________________________Lost__D/A____Lost___D/A
Tanks_____________________________________1482..132.....409....40
Armoured Fighting Vehicles________________.718...36.....247.....8
Infantry Fighting Vehicles________________1787..123.....415....34
Armoured Personnel Carriers_______________.272...17.....203....18
Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) Veh..38....5......25....12
Infantry Mobility Vehicles________________.170....3.....247....14
Command Posts And Communications Stations_.216....4.......8.....0
Engineering Vehicles And Equipment________.223...42......39.....0
Self-Propelled Anti-Tank Missile Systems__..27....4......20.....1
Heavy Mortars_____________________________...0....0.......0.....0
Artillery Support Vehicles And Equipment__..89....2......21.....0
Towed Artillery___________________________.144...11......74....16
Self-Propelled Artillery__________________.295...15......85....19
Multiple Rocket Launchers_________________.162....4......33.....2
Anti-Aircraft Guns________________________..16....0.......4.....0
Self-Propelled Anti-Aircraft Guns_________..20....3.......3.....1
Surface-To-Air Missile Systems____________..77....9......87.....4
Radars____________________________________..20....1.......0.....0
Jammers And Deception Systems_____________..20....2.......1.....0
Aircraft__________________________________..64....4......56.....0
Helicopters_______________________________..65...10......28.....1
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles__________________.154....0......45.....0
Naval Ships_______________________________...8....4......24.....1
Logistics Trains__________________________...0....0.......0.....0
Trucks, Vehicles and Jeeps________________2115...88.....476....19
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-equipment.html
https://www.oryxspioenkop.com/2022/02/attack-on-europe-documenting-ukrainian.html
They include stuff shipped over from your terrorist empire and unlike your “Ghost of Kyav” sources, they provide locations of destroyed equipment, so actual independent journalists, not controlled by your masters, can verify their claims.
These silly figures you provided are unverifiable because your propaganda is used to having total informational dominance. They expect their victims to just listen and believe anything they broadcast.
That’s nice.
Personally, I don’t believe anything about the war that comes out of the organizations affiliated with the cartel in DC who planned this war and set it in motion.
I cut my teeth so to speak, on Vietnam. I know what lying looks and sounds like. I suspect both sides exaggerate when it comes to the losses of the other side, but I have also noticed that the territory Ukraine claims to have taken seems not to lie within the boundaries of Ukraine, but rather is parked somewhere up Zelensky’s arse.
Indeed you should not, examining the evidence as it appears is a counter weight to this if you have issues with Oryx, if it is that you just distrust all non Russian sources then you are just opting for a different lie.
What territory would that be? Are you claiming that the Ukrainians claim to have take territory in Russia or any of it’s other neighbors?
Putin can skip continental Europe and hit the US and UK where it hurts, make them pay a price, hit Washington and London, nothing else will stop the US and UK.
And it may very well happen, or maybe destroying all the German Leopard tanks the minute they cross into Ukraine……….Russia must understand this is not just a friendly game of poker, but is truly for the very existence of Russia.
Reznikov is right. One year ago Putin said: we consider the creation of American military infrastructure in Ukraine and in other East-European countries as unacceptable. The current escalation of the conflict between USA and Russia started after Americans categorically refused to respect the 1997 NATO-Russia security agreements.
It looks, American policy in Europe is successful. US government got what it wanted. Particular it is profitable for MIC. However, from the viewpoint of geopolitical interests, US is losing. First of all, American financial system is losing it’s credibility. Also American military might is questioned. US committed so heavily into Ukraine, that the failing to protect Kiev regime, would demonstrate to the whole world American military impotence. It would be even much worse, if Poland follows Ukraine.
No one is trying to explain, why Germany and Hungary are so different in what does concern the loyalty to American oligarchy. I mean not just difference between Scholz and Orban or the difference between German and Hungarian political elites, but the difference between the people. Both Germans and Hungarians are suffering from this escalation. However, Germans, in their majority, are supporting the anti-Russian policy while Hungarians are categorically against it. The deep economic cooperation with Russia is, of course, very much important. However there is something else – the different attitude toward Ukrainian neo-Nazism. Germans are supporting Ukrainian neo-Nazism wholeheartedly because they are dreaming about the revanche for WW II. Hungarians in WW II were on side of Germany, but since that time much changed in their region. Last 8 years Hungarian minority in Ukraine had the same problems as Russian minority. In a way even worse. Russia at least is fighting for the liberation of Russians in Donbass and Novorossia from Kiev regime, but Hungary got in such a situation when it obliged to stay in line with other NATO countries against Russia and thus support the same Kiev regime which deprived Transcarpathian Hungarians of their human rights.
And what happens if Ukraine will be divided and current Kiev regime still keeps the power? What about Transcarpathian Hungarians?
There is actually a very simple explanation. Soros is the architect of the current “Tropical Ukraine” and Orban want him dead.
The puppet regime and all broadcasted propaganda in Germany is entirely controlled by Whashington. Plus, majority of Germans are “law abiding citizens”. They don’t have the spine to remove occupational regime peacefully or by force. Structure and obedience is part of German ethnocutural character. This was noted by Bolsheviks more than a century ago.
Still I am convinced that Hungarian minority in Ukraine is the main reason why Hungarians can’t feel the same as Germans or Italians about this issue. It would be much better for Hungary if Ukraine collapses and Transcarpathian Hungarians get their chance to reunify with Hungary.
What happens should not involve the USA, the USA has to take care of its own MAJOR issues at home.
It is too late to speculate about that. As I said, US is committed too heavily.
Only because the DC Ghouls are fools and evil. Let us hope USA will back out, as they have so often of late.
The DC Ghouls will simply be replaced by other DC Ghouls. Nothing in DC will change until the US political system rots out.
The US seems willing to tempt the fates….
While the DC Ghouls and their family hide in luxury bunkers built in the sides of mountains while any surviving citizens will be waiting like hungry rabid wolves for them to show their faces…
He’s part of a de facto installed dictatorship.
Yes, this is why Putin attacked.
The attack will continue until this is no longer true. That now must mean the rump state that survives will be disarmed and neutral.
Ukraine is a corrupt failed state with a deceitful clown heading it. It’s simply a scrap dump for the imperialist turds.
At 8:35 am local time, Ukrainian militants again shelled the city of Donetsk. As usual, the targets of the Ukrainian attack were civilian buildings and public places.
The western leaders will go before the Hague to answer for their many many crimes against humanity.
In a sane world Biden and his puppets in Europe would be at the Hague, but this is no longer a sane world. This is the world of The Stupid.
“Ukraine DM Says It’s a ‘Fact’ That Kyiv Is a ‘De Facto’ NATO Member Oleksii Reznikov previously said that Ukraine is on a ‘NATO mission'”
Perhaps the entire upper echelon in Ukraine are using cocaine and lapsing into a delusional state.
Ukraine will collapse soon enough! Western sycophants will be replaced and the world will calm down.
Oleksii Reznikov and Baghdad Bob will be working on their comedy act.
They will also be a De facto wasteland. Like when you take your grandkids on road trip and say to the kids people use to live here.
The assertion of de facto NATO membership “implicates NATO as a direct party to the conflict….[giving] Russia a pretext to launch an attack on NATO bases in Europe if it chooses to do so” – an action the US/NATO’s continued escalation makes “more likely.”
1/ Yes and no. Yes, as has been said – Ukraine statement or not – NATO’s escalated military support is a brinkmanship that increases the chance that Russia will directly attack…or engage in its own brinkmanship counter-attacks. For example – a counterattack that – unlike the ‘Polish farmhouse’ episode, where Ukraine did it – actually does spill out of Ukraine territory. (A Russian counterattack on materiel at a border ‘entry point,’ e.g.)
2/ Yes also because the US has long engaged in a ‘back door’ membership process where, vs Ukraine in NATO, it puts NATO in Ukraine – a plan that has morphed into the US/NATO’s ’10 year plan’ to fully ‘NATO-ize’ Ukraine militarily. (see below reference)
3/ But NO, Ukraine is NOT ‘a NATO member in all but official title’: because Ukraine must be called a de facto junior member – a form of so-called ‘membership’ whose defining feature is that you get weapons but you don’t get Article 5 protection, so your citizens do all the fighting and dying. As Snider wrote below, doing all the fighting for US/NATO is the ‘price’ of junior membership.
4/ And junior membership is all Ukraine ever gets: contrary to the Ukraine foreign minister assertion re ‘just around the corner’ Ukraine membership, in 2008 some NATO members secretly said no to NATO membership, which they correctly saw as unacceptably provocative…though the compromise with the US of declaring future membership, and the US/NATO’s ‘back door’ build up merely delayed the Russian military response.
5/ Upshot? Ukraine functions as the instrument of a US/NATO proxy hot war with Russia that – without US troops – neocons can keep US political support for; and that – as a merely ‘de facto’ junior member – the US/NATO hopes to use without a direct Russian response.
“The Back Door to NATO,” Ted Snider, October 24, 2022
Because permanent NATO bases were illegal for a de facto member state, NATO rotated troops for military exercises in Ukraine. 10 exercises had been planed for 2022.
Russians knew what the intentions were.
“10 exercises had been planed for 2022.”
ty, I did not know that!
I think I picked it up in the Army times, it is a while ago and nothing came of it after Feb, 24, 2023
likely link appreciated! – if you find it, sounds like something good for antiwar to get that they might have overlooked at time – i’ve sent them some article links they published (which they might have found themselves independently).
Ukraine DM Says It’s a ‘Fact’ That Kyiv Is a ‘De Facto’ U.S. Slave
The WEF great-reset mafia uses proxy armies. Ukraine is a proxy army that has been building for years to punish Russia. ISIS (rebranded Al Qaeda) was a CIA proxy intended to give Assad and Syria the Gaddafi and Libya treatment. The Russian air force wiped them out thwarting the neocon plan of taking out 7 countries in 5 years. This will get worse because the American petro-dollar empire is fighting for its existence.