Honestly, I have to side with what Biden said on this issue a couple days ago. Ukraine can’t join until the war is concluded, regardless of the outcome., Allowing them to join NATO right now would obligate all member states to escalate the conflict with Russia because all of NATO must defend all member states. That would be a dangerous precedent, as it would essentially be an implicit declaration of war by NATO against Russia and prove Putin’s propaganda blustering true, giving him even more diplomatic ammunition to attack the legitimacy of NATO, and accuse NATO of being an offense organization rather than an defense organization.
I don’t think anyone was expecting a vote to ratify Ukraine today, just a solid plan with a timeline. Everyone agrees Ukraine should join when the war ends, what is “the end” of the war; when Russia leaves, or after Russia stops launching attacks from its borders? What steps will Ukraine need to take at that point that it hasn’t already? How long will the process take? Is it more like Finland, more like Sweden, or more like…2014? I think those were the details Zelenskyy was looking for, and while Stoltenberg says one thing, Biden and Scholz say another, Sunak’s talking out of both corners of his mouth, the Baltics want Ukraine on their flank ASAP, Western Europe doesn’t want to provoke Putin still (I think China is running a lot of interference on their behalf diplomatically).
Ukraine is okay not receiving an invitation to join today, but they at least want a Save the Date and NATO can’t agree on a wedding date yet.
Because, using your analogy, the “court case” from the divorce of the previous marriage hasn’t been concluded yet.
There’s literally no upside to NATO giving a timetable besides “when the war is concluded” because nothing can be done until then anyway.
What kind of other timetable would you suggest?
NATO should escalate the conflict
Should they, though? You do realize that results in the entirety of Europe being pitted against Putin’s Russia, who is still a nuclear power run by a despot despite their decaying conventional military. The potential mobilization could begin to snowball very, very rapidly. Russia also still has the BRICS alliance behind them to feed them resources, although the cohesiveness of their pacts has yet to be tested. It could turn into a horrifying bloody mess ten times the scale of Ukraine overnight.
NATO actively escalating the situation also plays into Putin’s propaganda machine. He has long painted NATO as the aggressor, as NATO being the one who encroached upon Russia’s borders. It’s effective to drum up nationalistic sentiment. Proving him right would galvanize Russia’s population, increase his support, and only further cement his slowly-crumbling political power both domestically and internationally.
Prigz literally marched to moscow with no resistance the combined forces of NATO would take russia in a week lol. Shit we wouldnt even need to get all of NATO involved. Just let Poland go nuts.
The BRICS alliance is not even a real alliance, its nothing more than a cute outdated acronym.
Not even giving ukraine a roadmap or a solid timeline is absolutely disgraceful and just shows where NATO’s priorities lie.
Ukraine “deserves respect” Zelenskiy said
Clickbaity headline.
Yeah, I read another article by different news and there was also comment that another (unnamed) “representative from Central Europe” said that Ukraine went over the line with this.
Why can’t they just straight say that it was a representative from Hungary?
Clickbaity headline
It’s not though - is it?
Literally the first line of the article expands on it:
- “Volodymyr Zelenskiy has accused Nato leaders of showing disrespect to Ukraine by refusing to offer it a timetable for when it will be invited to join the military alliance”*
That’s also a pretty vague take. The article phrases it weirdly too. The actual quote is far less adversarial.
Saying “Ukraine deserves respect” is not an accusation, the clickbaity article is just continuing on from the clickbaity headline
Giving a timeline would just give Putin a timeline to work to
The president of ukraine is saying Ukraine needs a timeline. I think the president of ukraine knows better about the threat to their country. .
The threat to his country is a separate matter to a timeline to join NATO.
Avoiding world war three seems advisable.
Best way to do that is to push for peace talks.
Once Russia have been pushed back sure, otherwise Ukraine is conceding territory and Putin wins. Which means he’ll probably roll into another ex Soviet state for reasons
If* they are pushed back. The counteroffensive results have been underwhelming to say the least and it’s not looking likely that ukraine will take any territory back. Hence why peace talks should be pursued to stop thousands of russians and Ukrainians dying.
I agree. Weakness in 2014 led to the full scale invasion. Now, we are showing it again. Putin is trying to drag this out till the US 2024 election hoping trump or another friendly R gets in power and stops the support. Why are we doing this now…? I suppose the US is playing the “we don’t want a war” card and trying to balance between support and not wanting direct conflict but Zelensky is right on this one.
Its just what is expected from Zelensky. He knows Nato’s constitution forbids allying with a warfaring nation, but the news and headlines brings more support to ukraine. As it should IMO
Here’s my tinfoil hat theory:
NATO and maybe US used Ukraine. They meddled in elections in Ukraine, just like how Russia, China, and everyone else does to every other country. There’s a wave of demonstrations in 2013 and 2014 that lead to Zelenskyy, who genuinely sounds like he is actually a good president to be elected, but there was just enough foreign intervention to help that happen to allow Russia to claim that the elections were false. Russia then used existing (and earned) anti-Russian sentiment to take over Crimea. There’s also historic reasons (not good ones) for people in Crimea to be more pro USSR. They annexed Crimea because they knew that Ukraine could not join NATO if there was an existing land dispute. They did that with Georgia and “South Ossetia” years earlier and it worked. My theory is that NATO/US saw the Russian invasion coming. So, they made it look like they were going to invite Ukraine into NATO in order to provoke Russia to invade. Putin, being an evil pizda went for it thinking that he could take Ukraine in three days (after 5 years of propaganda and assisting pro-Russian rebels). But that didn’t work out, and now NATO/US are using Ukraine as a proxy war to weaken Russia who they see as a natural enemy.
And if anyone reads this thinking that I’m taking some pro-Russian stance, read it again. Fuck Putin. The victims here are Ukrainians and Russians that are fooled into thinking that they’re doing the right thing.
The Euromaidan demonstrations started because Russian planted president (Yanukovich, the one that run to Russia and got their citizenship) first promised that he won’t stand on the way of Ukraine entering EU, then when he was in power he reversed that and said that Ukraine will align with Russia. This is what created the upset.
At that time Ukraine wasn’t interested in joining NATO, the population support was single digit. After 2014 invasion the NATO support drastically increased. BTW: the invasion of Crimea started when Yanukovich was still the president, showing that this was planned no matter what.
And please stop with the BS of “NATO invite provoking Russia”, everyone knows, including putin, that NATO is a defensive alliance, and (as you also pointed out) unlike Russia it doesn’t conquer countries forcing them to join, the countries want to join themselves and seek to be invited. NATO is not a threat to Russia sovereignty. NATO is a threat to Russia’s imperialism, because allows those smaller countries to not be afraid of being invaded. This is why Poland and Baltic states joined EU and NATO on speed run when they got the opportunity. This is what Ukraine wants to do the same.
I don’t disagree why Euromaidan happen and what Yanokovich did. I agree with you on that. All I’m saying is that while all that was happening, there was also external pressure to help Ukraine split from it’s remaining Soviet ties. All I’m saying is that there was just enough of that to allow Russia to use it as an excuse for their behavior. Just like how in US during 2016 elections people were claiming that Hilary Clinton was being helped by the Russians. Then they said the same about Trump. And now that the dust is mostly settled we saw that “russian bots” were on both sides just trying to create chaos. I’m not claiming that the results of that election were affected by Russia in a meaningful way, but because they were present, they became a useful scapegoat. So, when it comes to Ukraine, all I’m saying is that I don’t think EU or NATO actually care if Ukraine joins, but they knew that it would weaken the CIS if Ukraine joined them, or if the war broke out.
Regarding Crimea, I’m sure that Putin and Yanukovich wanted to make Crimea Russian as a way to create a foothold. I think the whole “we’ll join EU” thing was never going to happen and Crimea was going to also be an excuse for not doing that.
I want to clarify what I mean regarding NATO and Russia and “provocation”. I’m not saying that the Putin was provoked. Putin was going to do everything in his power to keep Ukraine out of EU/NATO. All I’m saying is I think the Europeans knew that this will probably happen and didn’t care.
Ukraine and all the other Baltic nations should do what they want and if they want to join EU/NATO, that’s great. Putin is a piece of shit. But I feel like the support from the EU in this war has not been enough. And that lack of support makes me think that they don’t really care about “helping Ukraine” and they just want to keep Russia tied up in this war. Because they know Putin will keep this thing going until he physically can’t.
Whether you are doing this accidentally or purposefully, you are spreading Kremlin’s disinformation. Ukraine already split with Russia in 1991. And it was its own independent country. It traded with other countries. The reason they wanted to join EU is to help improve its economy. Belonging to EU opens market for exports to other EU countries and also allows to get funding for improvements.
Also regarding provoking Russia I think you forgot that the west largely saw Russia positively (it was the central and Eastern Europe that did not trust them) until 2022. Despite what they did in 2008 despite 2014. Putin thought west will chicken out once again when he snatches Ukraine to rebuild USSR.
I never claimed that Ukraine wasn’t split from Russia in 91, but they did have a couple of presidents that were very friendly with Putin. I don’t understand how anything I’ve said can be considered “pro Russia”.
You are saying that
You are saying that this was some kind of western plot of using Ukraine to provocate Russia.
In reality Ukraine is just a piece of a bigger plan, but a very important piece.
Since putin came to power, Russia started implementing a plan to rebuild USSR. It was mostly ignored by US and the rest of the west, but if you read it or basically everything was gong according to plan until 2022:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics
There are some changes, for example I believe China replaced Japan in the plans (the book was published in 1997).
BTW: this interview was recorded before the full invasion, before Zalensky even won. This invasion was not really that surprising for anyone who was paying attention.
Here’s another perspective, showing that Russian window of opportunity was closing down: https://youtu.be/rkuhWA9GdCo
(keep in mind the author talks how Russia thinks, not necessarily the reality. Russia strategy was to itself, they did that by conquering their neighbors to create a buffer, then absorbing them and realizing that now they need to provide buffer for the buffer, repeat)
My god. I’m not saying that Russia was provoked by the west. I’m saying is that those who saw the war coming didn’t care and gave Ukraine a false sense of security by saying that they’ll have protection. And once Russia attacked the help that the EU is providing is only enough to keep Russia at bay and not to actually push them back. And that this current state of the war is useful for both EU/NATO and the US. I feel like because I don’t see it exactly the same way you do, you’re lumping me with whoever else you don’t agree with.
No one was providing false sense of security for Ukraine. This was recorded in January, before the full invasion:
The goal was to scare putin from invading in the first place. He even mentioned there that Russia will prevail, because no one expected they would do as well.
As for EU’s help, you can thank Hungary for it, they block everything, including humanitarian help, EU countries are forced to provide help independently.
Refrain from speaking on that which you know nothing
Don’t be a jerk.
I wonder if part of the reticence to give Ukraine a firm commitment for joining NATO is they expect it to be a negotiating chip with Russia in future peace talks. Pausing Ukraine’s NATO membership bid might be the way to give Russia an out without territory concessions…
NATO*
I was wondering the same, does not apply to UK journalism style apparently
Use all capitals if an abbreviation is pronounced as the individual letters (an initialism): BBC, CEO, US, VAT, etc; if it is an acronym (pronounced as a word) spell out with initial capital, eg Nasa, Nato, Unicef
Interesting, thanks for sharing.
