By amplifying Putin’s bogus claims of NATO’s responsibility for today’s war, Western politicians like Trump and Farage risk legitimizing Russian imperialism.
From: Politico BY PETER DICKINSON
Peter Dickinson is editor of the Atlantic Council’s Ukraine Alert Service and publisher of Business Ukraine magazine.
Did NATO enlargement trigger Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? This has long been the official Kremlin narrative, with Moscow portraying the decision as a direct response to decades of NATO expansion into Central and Eastern Europe.
Since the invasion, many outside Russia have also pointed the finger at NATO, with U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump and Reform UK party leader Nigel Farage recently becoming the latest high-profile personalities to echo these claims.
It’s easy to understand why significant numbers of Western politicians, academics and commentators find Russia’s NATO narrative so persuasive. After all, NATO’s growth following the collapse of the Soviet Union is a matter of historical record, with virtually all of the alliance’s new members drawn from the Kremlin’s Cold War-era empire.
But while this would certainly seem to support Russia’s allegations of Western encroachment at first glance, Moscow’s efforts to blame the invasion on NATO don’t stand up to serious scrutiny.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s central argument has always been that NATO enlargement poses a grave security threat to the Russian Federation. However, his own actions convincingly demonstrate that he doesn’t actually believe this himself.
When Finland and Sweden responded to the invasion by announcing plans to join NATO, Putin said Russia had “no problem” with this Nordic expansion — despite the fact that it would double Russia’s existing border with the alliance, while also transforming the Baltic Sea into a NATO lake. Furthermore, Putin has since underlined this complete lack of concern by unilaterally demilitarizing its Finnish border and withdrawing approximately 80 percent of Russian troops.
The Russian ruler’s evident indifference toward Finnish and Swedish NATO membership makes a mockery of his claims of feeling existentially threatened by Ukraine’s far weaker ties to the alliance. If Putin genuinely felt NATO posed any danger to Russia, he would have vigorously protested Finland’s decision to join and taken steps to strengthen Russia’s military presence along the country’s new border with NATO. Instead, he did the exact opposite.
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