Ukraine’s 44-year-old President Volodymyr Zelensky told NATO ministers meeting in Brussels today that Ukraine was in a “gray zone” when it came to defending the country against the Russian onslaught. Like he’s done with the U.S. Congress, European Commission and Israeli Knesset, Zelensky has asked for more weapons and for a no-fly zone, to prevent Russian from its dominant air campaign laying Ukrainian cities and towns to waste. Zelensky’s message to NATO ministers was that there’s no reason they can’t go to Ukraine’s defense, even though it’s not a formal member. “A month of unpunished destruction of the peaceful sate, and with it—the whole architecture of global security. All this is before the eyes of the whole world,” Zelensky told NATO ministers. Zelensky can’t fathom why NATO has not committed troops or more air support in its war with the Russian Federation.
With the U.S. Congress and President Joe Biden, 79, giving Ukraine $14 billion to prosecute the war with Russia, Zelensky wants more, namely, NATO troops and a no-fly-zone. “But Ukraine is holding on bravely! At the cost of thousands of lives. At the cost of destroyed cities. At the cost of almost 10 million migrants,” Zelensky said, expressing frustration with NATO’s response. Ukraine has tried to join NATO since Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula March 1, 2014, after a Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed coup, toppled the Kremlin-friendly government of Viktor Yanukovych. Russian President Vladimir Putin seized Crimea to protect his Sevastopol naval base, after the pro-Western coup. For the last eight years, Ukraine sought NATO membership, hoping that NATO could do its battles with the Russian Federation. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said no to Ukraine because they were at war with Russia.
Ukraine claims that in the eight years since Putin seized Crimea, Ukraine has lost 14,000 citizens and troops, battling pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine, home to the peoples’ republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Zelensky, and his 56-year-old billionaire chocolate baron predecessor Petro Poroshenko, begged Stoltenberg for membership. Stotenberg knew accepting Ukraine would have started WW III with the Russian Federation. Yet to Zelensky, he’s less concerned about WW III, or the unthinkable nuclear war, than reclaiming Crimea and the Donbass area. NATO resisted the idea to fighting Ukraine’s battles because they can’t work out its problems with the Kremlin. Once Yanukovych was toppled, relations with Ukraine deteriorated to the point of war. When it finally happened Feb. 24, Zelensky asked to join NATO again.
Zelensky’s constant requests to join NATO and its close military alliance to the United States, placed Ukraine in jeopardy of war with the Russian Federation. When it came to provoking Putin, asking for NATO membership was secondary to receiving unlimited lethal arms from the U.S. and NATO over the last three years. Put told Biden Dec. 24, 2021, that if the U.S. couldn’t renegotiate security arrangement in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, he would take “military-technical measures” to protect Russia’s national security. Biden insists the Ukraine War was “unprovoked and unjustified,” ignoring that the U.S. and NATO supplied Ukraine with tons of lethal weapons. Biden finds nothing wrong with that but evidently Putin did. So when it comes to the conflict being “unprovoked and unjustified,” as Biden says, there’s clearly two sides to every story, especially when it comes to a ceasefire.
Zelensky wants more weapons from the U.S. and NATO because there’s currently no serious effort to broker a ceasefire. ”We did not hear a clear answer,” Zelensky told NATO ministers. “Ukraine does not have powerful anti-missile weapons, and has much smaller anti-aircraft fleet than Russia. Therefore, their advantage in the sky is like the use of weapons of mass destruction,” Zelensky admitted. But if he knew that Russia had military superiority, why would Zelensky push Putin to the brink of war? Certainly Biden didn’t think twice about arming Ukraine to the teeth over the objections of Putin and the Russian Federation. Someone in the EU or NATO must ask Biden what he was doing provoking war with the Russian Federation. Because Biden says the war was “unprovoked and unjustified” doesn’t mean that it was. Anyone with any common sense knew that arming Ukraine had consequences.
Zelensky continues to insist that Ukraine needs more military assistance beyond the $14 billion commitment from the U.S. “The Ukrainian army has been resisting for a month in unequal conditions! And I have been repeating the same thing for a month now. To save people and our cities, Ukraine needs military assistance—without restrictions,” Zelensky told NATO ministers. There’s no limit to what Zelensky wants now that he’s embroiled in a war with the Kremlin. “You can give us 1% of all your aircraft. One percent of all your tanks. One percent!” No one in the U.S., NATO or EU have told Zelensky that he got into a war with Russia, it’s now his job to figure a way out. Asking for more arms only exacerbates the problems, does nothing to work toward a ceasefire and guarantees that Ukraine will be bombed into the Stone Age. Zelensky needs to negotiate for peace, not more arms.
