Perfidious is a good old-fashioned word that perfectly describes the U.S. government’s treatment of Ukraine. From Ted Snider at The American Conservative via archive.is:
The Ukrainians are in the unhappy position of fighting for someone else’s principles.
Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky was meeting with university students in southern Ukraine when he was asked about Ukraine’s security arrangements in the future. “We don’t know how it will turn out,” Zelensky responded. “No one will be able to answer that for sure. Either we will be in NATO, or we won’t be in NATO. We want to, but—”
Essentially the same message was delivered by Oleksiy Goncharenko, a lawmaker in Petro Poroshenko’s European Solidarity party.
“In Washington, several sources confirmed to me that Blinken told Europeans to stop talking to Ukraine about NATO. There will be no NATO. The topic of NATO annoys the U.S. elite, and they clearly sent a signal that Ukraine will not become a member of the alliance immediately after the war,” Goncharenko said. “There will be some movements towards the alliance. We will receive some leniency. But the fact is that in 2024 we will not become members, that’s for sure.”
According to reporting by the New York Times, Goncharenko had just returned from Washington where he met with members of both parties in Congress.
Though Goncharenko’s position ensured that his statement, which “appeared to be shedding light on the true state of relations between Kyiv and its allies,” was reported in the Kyiv Post and Strana.ua.
Goncharenko may not be a source to take too seriously. Yet his subsequent remark that Zelensky’s office has “come to terms with this” echoes Zelensky’s admission to the students, even if the detail about Blinken requires confirmation. The realization of the NATO lure deception may have begun months ago, but it may now be really beginning to “percolate through to the Ukrainian leadership” as one expert put it to me.
