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There was a particularly revealing moment at a revolution of NATO about four years ago, which perfectly captured the sometimes capricious way of the Western military alliance concerns Ukraine.
The secretary general of the day, the Jens Stoltenberg, often imperturbable, was questioned on the long -standing offer of the European country of Europe to join the Allies.
At this stage, Ukraine was waiting for more than a dozen years to be admitted.
And just like the first signs of a storm that approaches, there had been a disturbing accumulation of Russian forces on the border in the previous spring.
Stoltenberg was asked if he provided a scenario in which Ukraine would join NATO undisputed Russia. (Complete disclosure: I am the one who asked the question).
It was – maybe – unfortunately premonitory.
Stoltenberg, however, agitated it.
Each nation has the right to choose its alliances and associations, he replied.
The point – then and now – is that Ukraine had chosen. He had chosen one side and traced his own course. He had launched his share with allies in 2008 in the belief, perhaps mavized, that the Western promise of equity and collective security was their future.
And yet, then – like now – Ukraine has been left pending in front of the door.
Ukraine on the key
During the NATO summit this week, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy – whose all the words of the words were hung during the 2022 and 2023 gatherings – was relegated to the sidelines and the dining room while Western leaders discussed the fate of his closed country.
In all honesty, Zelenskky had time with the main leaders, including US President Donald Trump.
During this meeting, he obtained additional additional patriot missile systems and needed urgency.
There was a collective guarantee of additional aid worth 35 billion euros from European Allied countries. Canada – Au G7 the previous week – Promised additional $ 4.3 billion.
The summit ended with the secretary general of NATO, Mark Rutte, who is rarely offside with the Trump administration these daysDeclaring that the path of Ukraine to join NATO, as indicated at the Vilnius 2023 summit, is still “irreversible”.
Maybe he didn’t get Washington’s memo.
It was clear that the summit was adapted to Trump – a short and closely targeted program aimed at asking the allies to show him money for defense. Ukraine was a necessary, but unpleasant reflection.
Canada, the original sponsor of Ukraine members in 2008, apparently supported.
“We would have preferred that Canada would have preferred a special session with NATO, with Ukraine, absolutely,” said Prime Minister Mark Carney at the end of the summit on Wednesday,
While Carney said that he had raised several points related to Ukraine at the meeting of leaders behind closed doors, he said the majority of the collective agenda discussed had nothing to do with Ukraine and everything to do with the concerns of other allies. He used the Arctic as an illustration of something that Zelenskyy may not worry.
The Prime Minister’s remarks have highlighted what is essentially the fundamental fracture between Europe and the United States (at least this iteration under the Trump administration) on Ukraine.
“The United States does not consider Ukrainian security as essential to European security, and our European allies do,” the former American ambassador told NATO Kurt Volker to a recent panel organized by the Center for European Policy Analysis.
Europeans, he said, “believe that if Putin is authorized to prevail in Ukraine – or if Ukraine does not survive as a sovereign and independent state – they are in danger.”
Look | The Ukrainian describes the consequences of bombings:
Valeriy Mankuta, a worker to build the Ukrainian capital, told journalists that she was sleeping when he felt an explosion, wake up in rubble with a giant slab above his head. The explosion was one of the many nights, when Russia launched another strike barrier on Ukraine.
This was implicit in the enthusiastic comfort of Rutte about the membership offer of Ukraine, even if it risked the anger of Trump.
“They see the need to support Ukraine as an integral part of our security through NATO. The United States simply does not see that in this way,” said Volker.
The United States “thinks that NATO is NATO. You are doing the article five protection for NATO members, and the more it is done by our European allies themselves, the better,” he said. “And Ukraine is unhappy. It’s a war.”
RUSSIA RED LINE
Russian President Vladimir Putin made Ukraine’s potential membership of Ukraine a key red line for allies, insisting that his neighbor is prohibited from entering the Western alliance – forever.
Trump in his pursuit of a kind of Nobel Peace Prize has joined the argument and criticized Moscow Verboten – either to NATO or G7.
A month ago, Trump’s envoy in Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said that Russia’s concern about NATO enlargement was right.
Bullocks, known as the former NATO secretary general, Lord George Robertson.
“I had nine meetings with Vladimir Putin during my time as secretary general,” said Robertson, who led NATO from 1999 to 2003, when Putin came to power and the Alliance began his expansion to include old countries in the East Bloc.
“At no time did he complain about the expansion of NATO. Not at all.”
Robertson, in a recent interview with CBC News, describes the NATO argument of Putin as a “retroactive justification” to go to war with its neighbors (Russia also invaded Georgia in 2008).
Forged in the washing of history, the flood of disinformation, the recent confrontation of the Egos, the rush towards the rearmament and the massage of political points is an agreement signed by Putin and the Allied leaders – including the American president George W. Bush and Prime Minister Jean Chrétien – who created the NATO -Russia Council now deceased in 2002.
“Vladimir Putin put his signature on the Declaration of Rome, which approved the founding law of NATO-Russia (1997) and the guarantee of territorial integrity of all the nations of Europe,” said Robertson. “His signature is with mine.”
The date and event are burned in his memory.
“On May 20, 2002, the same day he held next to me at the press conference and said that Ukraine is a sovereign and independent nation, a state that will make its own decisions about peace and security,” said Robertson.
“And now, the same man says that Ukraine is not a nation and in a way, violently, it must be absorbed in its concept of new Russia.”
The former secretary general, during his interview, admitted having often brought a copy of the declaration of more than two decades in his costume pocket.
The document, for Robertson, is an always present reminder of Putin’s betrayal – perhaps even a personal memory of an achievement of the crown that history has turned into dust.
However, when the Ukrainians look at the same piece of paper, they see not only betrayal, but also another capricious moment.
