Recently a well-meaning American brother wrote me in a letter, “USA President Joe Biden is responsible for that war as he and a lot of Americans make money from foreign wars. Your President Zelensky and some of your political leaders may be in on it also, as they do not have any accountability as to where the billions of dollars have gone to that America has given to fund the war. Hopefully, President Trump will be able to put a stop to it!” This poor old man, probably without knowing it, conveyed the three main points of Trump’s election propaganda. Since most of Trump’s constituency may share such opinions, these points should be verified for truth.
1. Biden is to be blamed for Russia’s war of aggression.
Both during his election campaign and now, President Trump has continued to blame Biden for Russia’s war against Ukraine. Recently he made this statement, “I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them to join NATO… I believe that’s the reason the war started, because Biden went out and said they could join NATO”. Is this really the reason for this war?
The history of Ukraine’s relations with NATO dates back to 1992, when the country joined the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council. In 1994, Ukraine became the first post-Soviet state to join the Partnership for Peace program which provided for participation in joint military exercises, information exchange, and development of security capabilities. In 1997, at the Alliance Summit, Ukraine and NATO signed the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The Charter is the main political document governing Ukraine’s relations with NATO.
In 2002, Ukraine officially declared its intention to become a NATO member by signing the Membership Action Plan. This plan included reforms in the military sphere, strengthening democratic institutions, and ensuring the rule of law. In 2008 at its summit, NATO supported Ukraine’s application for the Membership Action Plan, and Alliance Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said that the Allies had agreed that Ukraine would be a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
After the annexation of Crimea by Russia and the outbreak of war in her eastern part, Ukraine began to actively seek support from its Western partners. NATO countries stepped up their assistance to Ukraine with military training, and in 2015 alone, 637 exercises were conducted to NATO standards. In 2018, NATO finally recognized Ukraine’s status as a candidate country on the way to joining the alliance, and in 2020, Ukraine became a member of NATO’s Enhanced Opportunities Program. In 2014, the Ukrainian parliament canceled Ukraine’s non-aligned status, and in 2019 the Ukrainian parliament passed a bill to enshrine in the Constitution of Ukraine the course towards membership of Ukraine in NATO[1].
For decades, Russia has used diplomatic pressure on NATO member states to keep Ukraine out. However, Ukraine’s longstanding course toward the Alliance has not prompted Putin to attack Ukraine. Therefore, the narrative that Ukraine’s aspirations for NATO membership were the cause of the war is outright false and simply part of Trump’s election campaign propaganda trying to get more votes and win the elections. Biden simply refused to comply with Putin’s demands to give guarantees of Ukraine’s non-membership in the Alliance during his talks with Putin in December 2021. At that time, Russian troops had been around Ukraine’s borders for 9 months, Russia had already decided to attack Ukraine, and US intelligence had precise plans for the attack, so Biden could not change anything. Besides, neither Biden nor Trump can single-handedly overturn the NATO summit’s decision to grant Ukraine a Membership Action Plan. In contrast to the weak Biden, the strong Trump has caved in to the dictator Putin’s demands while blaming Biden for the war and passing off his embarrassing compliance as wisdom and leadership.
There is another reason why Trump’s words “I don’t see any way that a country in Russia’s position could allow them to join NATO” are not true and are simply part of the justification for his current actions towards Ukraine. In 2002, three former Soviet republics – Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia – applied to join the European Union and NATO and in 2004 all three states became NATO members. During the Russian aggression, Finland joined NATO in 2023 and Sweden in 2024. As a result, Russia gained 1,353 miles of new border with NATO countries. None of this prompted Putin to attack these states! On the contrary, Russia reacted quite calmly to this, and this is understandable because NATO is a defensive alliance and does not pose any threat to Russia.
All of Putin’s talk about Ukraine’s membership in NATO was just a pretext for war, not the cause of war. Even if Biden had guaranteed him that Ukraine would not join NATO, he would have found another pretext for war. All of this is because of his imperial ambitions: he has long been coveting Ukraine and preparing to conquer her. For years, he has been saying that Ukraine’s independence is a temporary phenomenon, that the Ukrainian people and language do not exist, and that Ukrainians are just Russians despite the fact that Ukrainians and Russians are fundamentally different anthropologically. Therefore, he has to correct the historical mistake and unite the two countries into one, adding Belarus as well. To do this, he invented the ideology of the “Russian world”, and his history-distorting article in the summer of 2021, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” was undoubtedly an ideological rationale for attacking Ukraine.
Why is Ukraine’s NATO membership such a big deal to Putin? There is one simple answer to this question: because this membership is the only obstacle to his imperialistic plans. Trump’s denial of NATO membership to Ukraine shows that he does not care much about Ukraine’s sovereignty, as he recently said indifferently: “Ukraine may become part of Russia.” So, the “leader of the free world” and “defender of the Christian faith” seems to have no problem with allowing a communist Nazi dictator, who is brutally persecuting both political and Christian freedom in his country, to break numerous international laws and conquer a free, sovereign state which has been the Bible belt of the former Soviet Union.
To be continued…
[1] For a complete chronology of Ukraine-NATO relations, see the Ukrainian government website, using the browser’s English translation function: https://ukraine-nato.mfa.gov.ua/ukrayina-nato/hronologiya-vidnosin-ukrayina-nato.
