President Joe Biden made clear Monday that Ukraine does not yet have the go-ahead to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, a move long sought by Ukraine and vehemently opposed by Russia.
For a moment, it appeared Ukraine may be closer to joining the trans-Atlantic mutual protection treaty when President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared to announce a change on Twitter shortly before Biden began a news conference in Brussels, where he was attending a NATO summit.
“Commend @NATO partners’ understanding of all the risks and challenges we face. NATO leaders confirmed that (Ukraine) will become a member of the Alliance,” Zelenskyy tweeted. His tweet did not say when the country would join.
Biden, who has previously called for Ukraine to join NATO, made clear that such a move had not been approved yet.
Joe Biden is lying, of course. It was decided in 2008 that NATO would consume Ukraine, as NATO itself reaffirmed today:
We reiterate the decision made at the 2008 Bucharest Summit that Ukraine will become a member of the Alliance with the Membership Action Plan (MAP) as an integral part of the process; we reaffirm all elements of that decision, as well as subsequent decisions, including that each partner will be judged on its own merits.
The reason Joe Biden has flipped into damage control mode might be his upcoming meeting with Vladimir Putin. For the Russians, NATO’s projected consumption of Ukraine can only be perceived as an existential threat:
Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face.
The US/EU/NATO axis has been waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine since the Obama-Biden Administration fomented the coup which brought about the demise of Ukraine’s constitutional, democratically-elected government in 2014. The Biden Administration is fully committed to escalation.