It may be better to be NATO’s enemy than its friend. From Jonathan Cook at middleeasteye.net:
The US and its allies are sustaining the very war they now cite as grounds for disqualifying Kyiv from Nato membership
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky holds a media conference during the Nato summit in Vilnius on 12 July 2023 (AFP)
The Nato summit in Lithuania this week served only to underscore the utter hypocrisy of western leaders in pursuing their proxy war in Ukraine to “weaken” Russia and oust its president, Vladimir Putin.
Both the US and Germany had made clear before the summit that they would block Ukraine’s admission to Nato while it was in the midst of a war with Russia. That message was formally announced by Nato Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky fumed that Nato had reached an “absurd” decision and was demonstrating “weakness”. British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace lost no time in rebuking him for a lack of “gratitude”.
The concern is that, if Kyiv joins the military alliance at this stage, Nato members will be required to leap to Ukraine’s defence and fight Russia directly. Most western states balk at the notion of a face-to-face confrontation with a nuclear-armed Russia – rather than the current proxy one, paid for exclusively in Ukrainian blood.
But there is a more duplicitous subtext being obscured: the fact that Nato is responsible for sustaining the war it now cites as grounds for disqualifying Ukraine from joining the military alliance. Nato got Kyiv into its current, bloody mess – but isn’t ready to help it find a way out.
‘it’s dangerous to be an enemy of the u. s., deadly to be a friend’ is a saying zelensky will learn the meaning of ultimately.