NATO Provoked Putin: Stoltenberg "Comes Clean" On The Ukraine War. "The War Started In 2014"

 While not permissible in just war theory, "Russian leaders certainly saw the invasion as 'just', because they were convinced that Ukraine joining NATO was an existential threat that had to be eliminated." The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs was so enthusiastic at the views of the realistic scholar, it endorsed his 2014 Foreign Affairs contribution.

In October 1990, the US State Department concluded in an analysis that "It is not in the best interest of NATO or the US that these states be granted full NATO membership" warning against "An anti-Soviet coalition whose frontier is the Soviet border."

The decision to expand NATO "May be expected to inflame nationalistic, anti-Western and militaristic tendencies in Russian opinion; to have an adverse effect on the development of Russian democracy; to restore the atmosphere of the cold war to East-West relations, and to impel Russian foreign policy in directions decidedly not to our liking."

"NATO enlargement, particularly to Ukraine, remains 'an emotional and neuralgic' issue for Russia, but strategic policy considerations also underlie strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia."

"The background was that 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 to not invade Ukraine. Of course, we didn't sign that."

Putin demanded the "Removal of 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." The conclusion is then indefatigably clear: "So [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders."

Russia will have to contend with its own problems and nightmares regarding the Ukraine War, but as such, Stoltenberg, NATO and the US imperium deserve a withering stare from history's muse.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/nato-provoked-putin-stoltenberg-comes-clean-ukraine-war/5838529