> It is a fact that over the past 30 years we have been patiently trying to come to an agreement with the leading NATO countries regarding the principles of equal and indivisible security in Europe. In response to our proposals, we invariably faced either cynical deception and lies or attempts at pressure and blackmail, while the North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns.
He is completely correct. After the collapse of the USSR, Russia repeatedly tried to join NATO. It was rebuffed by the US - why? Instead of forging a new alliance, the west preferred to uphold old friend-enemy distinctions, and instead moved the NATO ever closer to Russia‘s border, ignoring its security needs and breaking old promises (as evidenced by the embassy cable leaks).
Then, Ukraine shelled the Russian civilian minority population for years after the manufactured coup of the 2014 Euromaidan revolution. It started to suppress Russian language and culture. The Azov Nazi army committed cruel war crimes. Guarantees regarding the black sea fleet were no longer trustworthy. Essentially, they „kicked the dog until it bites“ and then blamed the dog. Putin repeatedly and very clearly communicated his (reasonable) terms for peace, and still people act like he can’t be reasoned with. Instead the West decided to send Ukrainian men into a meatgrinder, probably until the supply of recruits is exhausted.
Prominent establishment people like John Mearsheimer have been warning that this would be the inevitable outcome of Nato expansion, all the way back in the 90s, and that it was the greatest strategic error of the west. They were ignored by the same people that lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction to start another war.
The US State Department has a lot of blood on its hands.
>> After the collapse of the USSR, Russia repeatedly tried to join NATO.
That never happened. You will no find no trace of that in State Duma transcripts, policy papers or any other contemporary source. I can show you a long trail of adopted laws and doctrines for countries that eventually joined NATO (or failed in their bid), but nothing of this sort exists for Russia. It's a hoax invented to justify the invasion of Ukraine.
>> instead moved the NATO ever closer to Russia‘s border, ignoring its security needs and breaking old promises
The start of NATO expansion talks were preceded by a treaty between NATO and Russia declaring the respect for third countries freely choosing their allies. The narrative that NATO promised never to accept Eastern Europe (and broke that promise) was invented much later and conflicts with personal accounts and written agreements from that time.
>> Prominent establishment people like John Mearsheimer
His infamous lecture that presents a totally warped view of the world is the single most damaging piece of propaganda related to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. If that's what you're basing your views on, then it's no surprise that you are totally off the mark.
Even left-wing Guardian admits as much, you can find easily find other sources: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/04/ex-nato-head-s...
The West offered the "Partnership for Peace" program at the beginning of the 90s a distraction simply because they didn't see Russia as partners, but as defeated enemies. Even if we concede for a moment that this promise never happened, lots of people, among them Joe Biden, admitted back then that this would be a move that Russia could never accept. I think Bidens words were it would create a "vigorous and hostile reaction".
You can of course claim that this does not justify the invasion, but then you basically say Russia can never have legitimate security interests that run counter to the west.
> The narrative that NATO promised never to accept Eastern Europe (and broke that promise) was invented much later
That has been claimed often but proven wrong by the cable leaks.
> His infamous lecture that presents a totally warped view of the world
This is just a generic ad-hominem. If you have substantial rebuttals, I'm eager to hear them.
I don't put much value into what the Guardian write on topics like these. Joining a major international organization is a huge undertaking that involves thousands of people from many institutions over many years. Countries that joined NATO or tried to (Ukraine, Georgia) have a long paper trail of adopted laws, policy documents, parliamentary discussions and other bureaucratic artifacts. Show me Russia's trail.
For example, here's Polish timeline:
* 31 March 1991. Warsaw Pact dissolved.
* 11 March 1992. NATO secretary general visits Poland and says that the door to NATO is open.
* 10 April 1992. Polish defense minister and chief of staff attend NATO Military Committee meeting for the first time.
* 1 September 1993. Polish president sends a letter to NATO stating that NATO membership was a top priority of Polish foreign policy.
* 10 January 1994. NATO summit in Brussels. NATO proposes partnership in exercises, peacekeeping and humanitarian operations.
* 12 January 1994. Polish president meets with Clinton in Prague and accepts the offer.
* 2 February 1994. Polish prime minister signs partnership framework at NATO HQ in Brussels.
* 12 September 1994. First joint exercises.
* 26 January 1996. NATO invites Poland to individual dialogue with NATO.
* 8 February 1996. Polish ministers of defense and foreign affairs send a latter to NATO accepting the invitation.
* 4 April 1996. Poland presents a vision for cooperation with NATO.
* 7 May 1996. The start of one-on-one meetings between NATO and Poland within the individual dialogue framework.
* 8 July 1997. NATO invites Poland into the organization.
* 16 September 1997. Offical accession talks begin.
* 14 November 1997. Polish foreign minister accepts the invitation.
* 16 December 1997. Polish foreign minister signs the official accession protocols.
* 28 December 1997. Polish ambassador attends a meeting of NATO's North Atlantic Council for the first time.
* 2 February 1998. Canada becomes the first NATO member to ratify Poland's accession protocols.
* 17 December 1998. Polish defense minister attends a meeting of NATO defense ministers for the first time.
* 29 January 1999. NATO secretary general sends a formal NATO invitation to Poland.
* 17 February 1999. Polish parliament ratifies the North Atlantic Treaty.
* 12 March 1999. Poland becomes NATO member and the official ceremony is held.
And this is only a very superficial overview. Every major step was preceded by tons of discussions, minutes from meetings, transcripts from debates. If you printed it all out, you'd need a dump truck to move all those documents.
What's Russia's timeline? What policy papers were adopted, what agreements signed towards becoming a NATO member?
>> That has been claimed often but proven wrong by the cable leaks.
NATO allegedly assured Soviet leadership in 1990 that NATO would not expand eastwards. Multiple Soviet participants of those meetings have denied that. When the hoax first appeared, Soviet foreign minister Shevardnadze gave a lengthy interview, in which he not only denies those claims, but points out that they are anachronistic and don't fit the timeline of events. In 1990, Soviet leadership didn't forsee collapse of Warsaw Pact and the USSR itself. According to him, the possible NATO status of countries like Poland was never discussed, not with NATO, not within Warsaw Pact, not within the Communist Party circles in Moscow. That was totally out of the question and beyond comprehension, there was no need to seek any assurances.
Before Eastern Europe started negotiating entry, NATO and Russia signed a treaty in which they agreed to respect the right of other countries to forge alliances how they prefer. That was in May 1997. Former Warsaw Pact countries were invited into NATO in July 1997 and official negotiations began in September.
So even if such assurance existed, Russia and NATO agreed in that 1997 to the opposite before any Warsaw Pact country started official negotiations with NATO.
>> This is just a generic ad-hominem. If you have substantial rebuttals, I'm eager to hear them.
There are many ways he manipulates facts into his narrative, but I'll give you one very clear and non-political example how he misleads his audience. He shows a map of Russian share in European gas consumption at 8:48 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=525) and says that Eastern Europe is heavily dependant on Russian gas. It shows countries like Finland at 100%. While it is true that all of Finland's gas comes from Russia, natural gas makes up only 2% of all fuels consumed in Finland. This is not by chance, but by official government policy, which keeps Russian gas consumption low in order not to give Russians a way to extort Finland as could happen if Finland depended on Russian gas to a great degree. Other countries in Eastern Europe have pursued the same policy and have low share of gas in overall consumption, even if all of it comes from Russia.
Or if you want another example, then at 6:10 (https://youtu.be/JrMiSQAGOS4?t=370), Mearsheimer shows a map of Ukraine divided into red and yellow depicting Ukrainian and Russian language areas, saying how Ukraine is linguistically (and not only) "a badly divided country". That's extremely misleading. Ukraine is a bilingual country, where Ukrainian language is dominant in western part of the country and Russian language is in the eastern part, but there is no divide, because most people speak both languages and they inhabit a shared cultural space instead of living in parallel societies that don't mix due to language barriers. Here's a great map illustrating that, pay attention to vertical bars: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Map12_b.png Purple bars represent penetration of Ukrainian language and blue bars Russian language.
In regions like Kharkiv, only 10% of the population speaks only one language, evenly either only Russian or only Ukranian, so there's no reason to paint it as Russian. Out of 20 people, 18 speak both languages, 1 speaks only Ukranian, and 1 only Russian. Does this look like a "deep divide" to you?
‘Russia was provoked into this war because of things that happened 30 years ago’ is such bullshit apologia.
NATO was a defensive pact against Russia- and just because the Soviet Union collapsed does not mean Russia is somehow now moral or benign. They are run by brital KGB thug who faked his country’s 9/11 so they could build some patriotic solidarity killing Chechnyans.
What reductionist drivel. Discussion involves making actual points with logic and examples, in this case that would be examples about why Russia's actions (killing tens of thousands of civilians when the year prior to the war only 21 people were killed over territorial conflict, mainly by mines) and motivations (launching a war of aggression against a neighboring country that did nothing in the immediate time frame to justify such a murderous ESCALLATION on Russia's part, there was no immediate need to resort to overwhelming force) and are not evil (even though their troops use rape, pillage, and keep authority over their own through violence).
You can categorize some motives as evil, but the definition of evil is quite relative. You could extend it to "disturbing the peace", which Russia clearly did.
Big fact is that is was not unprovoked. The war started in 2014 when the US forced Ukraine to pick a side. The best thing for Ukrainians would be neutrality. But the US did not allow that.
I mean, "no reason" is understood to mean no good reason.
Say you walk next door and shoot your neighbour dead. Many people, even when they know it's because he made friends with his other next-door neighbour when you demanded he only be your friend, will say that you killed your neighbour for no reason.
> "being evil“ is a child's explanation
Fair enough. It was because Putin is a good person who was lonely and wanted to be loved and appreciated by his closest neighbour. That neighbour made him sad by befriending other people, and Putin had no choice but to slaughter thousands in an attempt to regain the exclusive friendship of his closest neighbour.
I don’t know that I agree. At least personally, I think there is a big distinction between a bad reason and no reason. No reason means random. A bad reason you can at least seek to understand - what caused this person to make this decision? We’re they abused? Mentally ill? Etc etc.
This is not true. Real people have motives, „being evil“ is a child's explanation for things it doesn’t understand.