European Commission President 63-uear-old Ursula von der Leyen expressed regrets that she didn’t listen to warnings from the Baltic States and Eastern European that 69-year-old Russian President Vladimir Putin would eventually invade Europe. Speaking at an annual state-of-the-union speech Sept..13, Van der Leyen said the EU should have heeded the warnings about Putin long ago. “One lesson from this war is we should have listened to those that know Putin,” Von der Leyen said, regretting that the EU once bought 40% of its natural gas and 30% of its oil from Moscow. But Von der Leyen quickly forgets the history where former German Chancellor Angela Merkel had strong economic ties to Russia, supplying the German economy with 40% of its energy. Merkel spend $11 billion of German taxpayer money building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to bring natural gas from Russia to Germany.
Von der Leyen can’t reconcile the fact that Ukraine sought NATO membership for the last eight years since Putin seized the Crimean Peninsula March 1, 2014 after a Feb. 22, 2014 CIA-backed coup topped the Kremlin-backed Kiev government of Viktor Yanukovych. Von der Leyen knew all about the CIA-backed coup that led to the instability in Ukraine, seeking NATO and EU membership to shake of the yoke of its long history with Russia. Von der Leyen’s speech ignores the history of how Ukraine developed into the worst armed conflict since WW II. Putin wasn’t happy when Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky asked NATO for membership, something resisted by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg resisted Zelensky’s overtures for years because he saw a growing border dispute that could lead NATO into a war with Russia.
Von der Leyen said she received warnings over the years from Georgia, Moldova and the Baltic States, all former Soviet satellites now independent of the Kremiln. But for some unknown reason, there’s an unwillingness on the part of von der Leyen and others in the EU to recognize that Ukraine had a growing border dispute with Russia. Once Stoltenberg rejected Kiev’s overtures for NATO and EU membership, the U.S. under 79-year-old President Joe Biden began supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons and military advisers. To confront Ukraine’s buildup of lethal weapons, Putin stationed over 100,00 troops near the Ukrainian border in the lead up to the Feb. 24 invasion. Putin asked Biden for months before the invasion to discus security arrangement in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, stating that the buildup of NATO forces and arms shipments to Ukraine threatened Russian national security.
So, when the U.S. and NATO arms shipments kept flowing into Ukraine, Putin finally invaded Feb. 24, creating the current stalemate that has the U.S. not just supplying arms but actually using Ukraine to fight a proxy war with the Russian Federation. Biden made his thoughts known March 26, telling a gathering in Warsaw that he can’t imagine that Putin can continue as Russian president. So, since then, the war took a different turn, morphing into a U.S. proxy war against the Russian Federation. “They have been telling us for years that Putin would not stop, von der Leyen said, ignoring the long history of Germany’s energy purchases with Russia. Von der Leyen pretends that Russia has been manipulating Germany and the European Union for years, when it fact, as Merkel and former German Chancellor Gerhard Schoeder worked on, stable energy supplies from a reliable supplier in Moscow.
Tempting now for von der Leyen to forget the history of German and the EU energy supplies from Russia. It’s Brussels’ prerogative to stop doing business with the Kremlin but not OK for von der Leyen and other EU leaders to ignore the massive arms buildup supplied to Ukraine before the Feb. 24 invasion. Von der Leyen talks like Putin has been the enemy of the EU when, in fact, he’s been a reliable energy supplier for years, delivering natural gas and oil at below market prices. EU’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy Josep Borrell regretted doing business with Putin. “Unhappily we didn’t and today we regret. We regret that last August we were not following this request, fulfilling this requests,” Borrell said about supply arms to Ukrainian troops. EU officials, like those in NATO, were the first to say Ukraine was not eligible for membership to either group.
If the EU and NATO really thought Ukraine was such an important country, why didn’t they commit troops and the requested no-fly-zone to Ukraine? Biden said Dec. 8, 2021 and again Feb. 15, 2022 he would not send U.S. troops to Ukraine because he didn’t want to start WW III. But supplying unlimited cash-and-arms to Ukraine to fight a U.S. proxy war against the Russian Federation has already started WW III. Biden shows no signs of moving the conflict to the peace table, stating that Ukraine must reclaim its lost sovereign territory to have any leverage with the Kremlin. So, Von der Leyen and Borrell have hindsight to decide how to proceed with Putin. If the U.S. and EU really had such security concerns with Kiev, they should have provided Kiev with the military might to push Russia back to its border.
About the Author
John M. Curtis writes politically neutral commentary analyzing spin in national and global news. He’s editor of OnlineColumnist.com and author of Dodging The Bullet and Operation Charisma.
