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The following quote is from an Atlantic Council “issue brief” on Ukraine, titled, “Providing long-term security for Ukraine: NATO membership and other security options,” published on May 23, 2023.

The document was authored by Hans Binnendijk and Franklin D. Kramer. Binnendijk, according to the Atlantic Council webpage, is “a distinguished fellow” at the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, while Kramer is also a “distinguished fellow” and board director of the Atlantic Council. Kramer spent time at the Pentagon and his focus, in part, is on NATO and Russia.

The authors argue,

“There is a strong case for Ukrainian membership in NATO. The most obvious argument is that deterrence based on assurances, partnerships, threat of sanctions, and military assistance has failed Ukraine twice. For the long-term security of Europe, deterrence cannot be allowed to fail again. This is especially true with regard to a country that has sacrificed so much for its freedom.”

Prior to the Russian SMO to denazify Ukraine, the consensus in Europe was that Ukraine did not meet the criteria for membership. NATO “has never offered [Ukraine and Georgia] a formal action plan to join, a necessary step for them to do so,” The New York Times reported in January 2022, the month before Russia entered Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in Europe.

Moreover, Ukraine must “meet one of the three main criteria for entry into NATO, a European nation must demonstrate a commitment to democracy, individual liberty and support for the rule of law… In a 2020 analysis, Transparency International, an anti-corruption watchdog, ranked Ukraine 117th out of 180 countries on its corruption index, lower than any NATO nation.”

All of this went by the wayside when Russia moved to put an end to eight years of terror bombing of civilians in the Donbas, a crime against humanity ignored by the USG and its European “partners.”

However, by April 2023, NATO boss Jens Stoltenberg “said all member countries have agreed that Ukraine will eventually join the transatlantic military alliance,” The Guardian reported.

As for EU membership, Ukraine cannot meet the necessary requirements. According to a report by Politico, “officials in some EU governments—notably Denmark and Portugal—have voiced strong reluctance to granting candidate status, arguing that if Ukraine were not at war, it would not remotely meet the qualifications for starting membership talks.”

The so-called “Copenhagen criteria” requires “that the candidate country has achieved stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, human rights, respect for and protection of minorities, the existence of a functioning market economy as well as the capacity to cope with competitive pressure and market forces within the Union.”

Ukraine continually violates “respect for and protection of minorities” (eight years of terror bombing ethnic Russian in the Donbas, killing around 14,000 people, although the actual number is unknown). Its economy is run by oligarchs. Ukraine is unable to compete with Germany or, for that matter Poland, following a round of neoliberal “shock therapy” (the Balcerowicz Plan) inflicted on Poland.

Unless the USG and the “collective West” are interested in a full-scale WWIII—and its nuclear annihilation terminus—there will be no practical way to ensure “deterrence” in response to Russia’s move to prevent “fast-track” NATO membership for Ukraine in addition to denazifying the country and putting an end to the murder of ethnic Russian civilians in Crimea, Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia.

As for “freedom” in Ukraine, we should take into account President Zelenskyy’s decision to shut down opposition political parties, outlaw the Russian Orthodox Church (78% of Ukrainians identify as Orthodox Christians), and closing down and nationalizing television stations to control the flow of information. How this is representative of democracy is not explained.

Ukraine deserves NATO’s full protection. With the guarantee of long-term security, Ukraine will be able to participate in any future negotiation with Russia with greater confidence… Importantly, NATO membership for Ukraine would not be a one-way street. Ukraine’s military is one of the most capable and certainly the most battle tested in Europe. They are fully trained on a wide array of NATO munitions and thus interoperable with NATO forces. Their knowledge of how Russia fights would be of incalculable value to the alliance.

NATO is not focused on the “full protection” of Ukraine. It is narrowly focused on the dismemberment of the Russian Federation, thus eliminating it as a competitor (with increased attention paid to another competitor, China, as trouble heats up in the South China Sea). Ukraine is a stepping stone in the effort to destroy and balkanize what remains of Russia, a plan that is failing stupendously.

For a detailed look at how the USG and its “partners” imagine they might take out Russia, see the RAND report, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia.” RAND analysts, locked in a sixty-plus-year-old Cold War mentality, fantasize about degrading the Russian economy with sanctions and economic warfare. However, despite sanctions, the Russian economy has realized modest growth, while the US has suffered negative growth and has entered a recession.

The above quote reveals the true objective of NATO, the USG, and its European partners—converting Ukraine into a permanent battle zone in a protracted war to destroy Russia and usher in a return to the 1990s when oligarchs rushed in after the fall of the Soviet Union and pillaged the country and, in the process, enabled the spread abject poverty, drug, and alcohol addiction, and shortened life spans for average Russians.

Needless to say, the Russian people and their popular leader, Vladimir Putin, will not allow this to happen again. The USG neocons believe they are invincible, never mind stupendous failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Psychopaths invariably undermine their own projects.

The USG will undoubtedly continue along the current path, oblivious to failure, pathologically ignoring the massive and unaddressed suffering they have inflicted on millions of innocent people, and shrugging off the prospect of nuclear winter and billions of innocent people starving to death or falling victim to the crime and violence that will follow the fall of civilization.

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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site, Kurt Nimmo on Geopolitics.

Kurt Nimmo is a regular contributor to Global Research.

Featured image is from The Transnational