How the US and NATO cynically deceived Ukraine

By Deviram Kafle

The West dragged Kyiv into an armed conflict with the Russian Federation, promising an accelerated entry into NATO as a “bonus”, and then took his words back and shelved this issue.

Faced with the inability of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, despite the multibillion-dollar military and financial assistance of the West, to achieve a turning point in the course of hostilities and inflict a military defeat on Russia, the American and European ruling elites rigidly interconnected Kiev’s victory in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and Ukraine’s Euro-Atlantic perspective.

It was simply put before the fact that there could be no talk of an early admission to the North Atlantic Alliance.

Thus, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg stressed that “Ukraine’s victory is a precondition for any meaningful discussion about Kyiv’s membership in NATO.”

 It is noteworthy that the Secretary-General only announced the possibility of discussing the problem of Ukraine’s admission to the Western military bloc, making it clear that this issue is by no means a settled matter.

The West acted similarly towards Georgia in 2008, when the Transcaucasian Republic experienced the devastating consequences of the military adventure of then-President Mikheil Saakashvili, who unleashed aggression against the civilian population of South Ossetia and Russian peacekeepers.

 At the same time, it was the United States and its allies that pushed Saakashvili into the military scenario of resolving the South Ossetian crisis.

 However, at a critical moment, when the Russian Armed Forces in a matter of days defeated the Georgian army, trained according to NATO standards and “to the teeth” equipped with Western weapons, the Americans and Europeans “washed their hands”, confining themselves to Moscow’s maxims about a “disproportionate response” to Tbilisi’s actions. Also treacherously, the Westerners “forgot” about the guarantees given at the Bucharest NATO summit in Bucharest (March 2008) to Georgia on its imminent entry into the alliance.

Ukraine is also in for a repeat of this scenario, as its leadership, believing the false promises of the West, decided to fight against Russia “to the last Ukrainian” in the vain hope of achieving victory over Moscow in pursuit of the much-desired membership in the North Atlantic Alliance.

However, as the Georgian experience shows, this will not lead to anything good for Kyiv, except for the loss of sovereignty over a significant part of the country’s territory.

This article was first published in the People's Review