February 2007: Vladimir Putin was invited to speak at the Munich Security Conference. Putin questioned NATO expansion into Eastern European countries and its role in promoting division, tension between Russia and the West. Putin: “Against whom is this NATO expansion intended?
Putin: “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact?” One year later, April 2008, at the Bucharest NATO summit, George W. Bush announced that both Ukraine and Georgia had a roadmap to NATO.”
Bill Burns, US ambassador in Moscow, sent a memo to US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice. Across the board, Burns wrote, for the Russian political class, “
#Ukraine is the reddest of red lines. Nyet means nyet.”
Burns: “Ukraine's NATO aspirations touched a raw nerve in Moscow. The Russians are concerned that the bitter division in Ukraine over NATO membership could lead to a split, even civil war." Then, he said, "Russia would have to decide whether to intervene, a decision the Kremlin does not want to face.
Burns was ignored. Six years later, in 2014, Obama toppled Ukraine’s democratically elected president Viktor Yanukovych, triggering the Donbas civil war. The US began building up the Ukraine army. During his first term, Trump was first to provide lethal weapons.
17 December 2021, after seven years of civil war and NATO intransigence, Joe Biden rejected Putin’s proposed mutual security accords that would have left “neutral”
#Ukraine intact.
Biden: “Russia doesn’t say who can join NATO.”
According to ex-Biden adviser Amanda Sloat, who was senior director for Europe on the National Security Council, Ukraine could have avoided war in December 2021 with one step: Ukrainian declaration of neutrality, she said, “would have prevented the destruction and loss of life."
Mati Smith🇦🇷
Diario AS
