Russia is not in favour of Ukraine joining NATO. Why, though?
Through this article, I want to share some insights that I have gained about the Ukraine-Russia crisis, and shed some light specifically on why Russia is not in favour of Ukraine joining NATO.
A brief background about NATO, for the benefit of those who, like me, do not know much about the organisation, other than the fact that it stands for North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. NATO was formed post World War II in the year 1949 to protect the European countries from the expansionist policies of the then USSR and limit its sphere of influence. Currently it has 30 member countries, 28 of which belong to Europe, and 2 to North America(read till the end if you are curious to know who the North American countries are).
After the fall of the USSR in 1991, Bill Clinton’s government imposed its vision of order in Europe and the then Russian Federation government, headed by Boris Yeltsin could do nothing but just stand by and watch. However, in 1993, Boris Yeltsin voiced his concerns about how East European countries allying with NATO had fuelled fears among the public of the alliance turning against Russia. Thus there was an act enforced for the same whereby NATO would never consider Russia as its adversary. It is also alleged that in a meeting between the US and the Soviet officials in 1990, it was verbally agreed upon that NATO would not extend its jurisdiction an inch eastward.
However, even after that, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO in 1999, followed by Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and, Slovenia in 2004. This troubled Moscow, which was wary of the Brussels-headquartered alliance edging ever closer to its borders and hemming it in from the West. It was seen by Vladimir Putin as a provocation , a serious breach of mutual trust and a failure to uphold the verbal commitment made by the US. Hence, he has been firmly against Ukraine as well as Georgia’s aspirations to join NATO, given that currently 5 of the countries surrounding Russia’s borders are already a part of NATO. Russia now sees the eastward expansion of NATO not as an effort to promote modernisation of the alliance, or to ensure security in Europe, but to act as a direct threat to Russia.
Coming to Ukraine, it is currently an “enhanced opportunity partner” in NATO, along with Sweden and Australia which means that it may be allowed to join the alliance in the future. In case this does end up happening, dire consequences have been threatened by Russia.
As per the news articles posted just hours prior to when I am writing this article, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy confirmed that the country was no longer pressing to join the alliance. In his own words, Zelenskyy did not want to be the president of a “country which is begging something on its knees.”
That is all for this article. The research that I did to gather information on this topic, has raised some new questions, namely-
- What has been the impact of the sanctions imposed by the US specifically, on Russia’s financial markets/instruments ever since the current crisis started?
- Why exactly did Russia annex Crimea in 2014?
- What is India’s stance in the ongoing crisis and what are the major Indian industries that have seen a setback owing to the Ukraine-Russia crisis?
- What is the Orange Revolution?
I will probably pick up one of the above-mentioned topics in my next article.
Leaving you with some facts that I came across while doing the background reading for this article-
- Ukraine had the 3rd largest nuclear stockpile in the world prior to the Budapest Memorandum in 1994 when it had to transfer all the nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation.
- Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia are collectively known as the Baltic States.
- The 2 North American nations in NATO are- the USA and Canada.
