#1: Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, speaking at Joint Committee Meeting of the European Parliament, 7 September 2023:
“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invading Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.
The opposite happened. He wanted us to sign that promise, never to enlarge NATO. He wanted us to remove our military infrastructure in all Allies that have joined NATO since 1997, meaning half of NATO, all the Central and Eastern Europe, we should remove NATO from that part of our Alliance, introducing some kind of B, or second class membership. We rejected that.
So, he went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders.”
#2: Jens Stoltenberg, NATO Secretary General, speaking in Kyiv on 24 February 2024 – the second anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine:
“President Putin started this war because he wanted to close NATO’s door and deny Ukraine the right to choose its own path.”
*** People like Jens Stoltenberg, who argue that NATO expansion into Ukraine is the principal cause of the Ukraine War, are commonly called “Putin’s puppet” or “Putin’s useful idiot.” Nevertheless, Stoltenberg’s explanation is correct.
If NATO had intended to be a defensive alliance after the fall of the Berlin Wall, they should have welcomed the buffer states between them and the remnants of the old Soviet Union.
But instead they aggressively and relentlessly expanded the ‘defensive’ alliance right up to Russia’s borders.
We are in WWIII right now, and any future generations that may exist will look back and wonder how we just went about our lives as if anything still mattered.
When we look at NATO, it has continued on an offensive stance against Russia for a long time.
From meddling in the Baltics to the current situation in Ukraine.
Useful idiots? Maybe we are simply tired of war.