NATO provoked Putin: Stoltenberg comes clean on the Ukraine War

In a February 2008 memorandum published by WikiLeaks, the assessment by Burns is stark: "NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains 'an emotional and neuralgic' issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia." Such strategic policy considerations included, among other things, a fear that the country could be "split in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene." Concerns also abounded regarding the "impact on Russia's defense industry, Russian-Ukrainian family connections, and bilateral relations generally."

What then made September 2023 special in this overview was an unusually frank admission from the NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg in remarks made to the joint meeting of the European Parliament's Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defence (SEDE).

That admission concerned Putin's unequivocal intentions to invade Ukraine were NATO to be further enlarged: "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 to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that."

Stoltenberg went on to pour scorn on this revealing point. Putin demanded the "removal of 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." The conclusion is then indefatigably clear: "So [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders."

In such statements, the lines between explanation, justification and wilful blindness are not always demarcated. But here we have a stunning confession that should be minted in every historical overview of a calamitous conflict that may eventually result, in some form or rather, in the very same de facto arrangements Putin demanded in 2021. Russia will have to contend with its own problems and nightmares regarding the Ukraine War, but as such, Stoltenberg, NATO and the US imperium deserve a withering stare from history's muse.