A few people in this thread have indicated that they believe that Russia’s invasion had nothing to do with NATO encroachment into Ukraine.
However I would remind them that Zelensky, president of Ukraine,
Jens Stoltenberg, the president of NATO, and members of Ukraine’s negotiating team, including their chief negotiator Davyd Arakhamia have publicly stated their disagreement by confirming that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO is the primary reason for Russia’s “special military operation.”
In the video linked to the article below, dated March 22, 2022, Zelenskyy is shown saying,
“Security guarantees and neutrality, non-nuclear status of our state. We are ready to go for it. This is the most important point. It was the main point for the Russian Federation as far as I can remember. And if I remember correctly this is why they started the war… I understand it’s impossible to force Russia completely from Ukrainian territory. It would lead to World War Three. I understand it and that is why I am talking about a compromise. Go back to where it all began. And then we will try to solve the Donbas issue, the complicated Donbas issue.”
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe...ts-2022-03-27/
On Sept 7, 2023, Jan’s Stoltenburg gave a speech to the European Union parliament in which he admitted that NATO enlargement was the primary reason for Russia’s invasion. He said,
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.
https://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-...Mog&format=amp
Furthermore, there were peace negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in March or 2022, the month following the start of the invasion. While the negotiations were ultimately unsuccessful, several members of the Ukrainian negotiating team, including their chief negotiator, Davyd Arakhamia, has admitted that Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis NATO was clearly Putin’s primary objective in negotiations. In an interview with Natalia Moseichuk on Ukrainian State tv, he said:
“They really hoped almost to the last moment that they would force us to sign such an agreement so that we would take neutrality. It was the most important thing for them. They were prepared to end the war if we agreed to, – as Finland once did, – neutrality, and committed that we would not join NATO.
In fact, this was the key point. Everything else was simply rhetoric and political ‘seasoning’ about denazification, the Russian-speaking population and blah-blah-blah."
One may argue whether or not sovereign nations have the right to join their own defensive alliances unhindered - it’s certainly a fair debate. But what I find to be a more pertinent question is whether or not the leadership of certain NATO member states (namely the United States) rightly predicted that Ukraine’s path to NATO would lead to a Russian invasion, and if so, was that their intended outcome? I think certain evidence points to ‘yes’, although I’m open to hearing evidence that they were completely surprised by the result.
Originally Posted by andy6025
A few people in this thread have indicated that they believe that Russia’s invasion had nothing to do with NATO encroachment into Ukraine.
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