Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia

By M. K. Bhadrakumar

December 19, 2023

In a plea earlier this month to Republicans not to block further military aid to Ukraine, US President Joe Biden warned that if Russia is victorious, then President Vladimir Putin will not stop and will attack a NATO country. Biden’s remark has drawn a sharp rebuke from Putin when he said, “This is absolutely absurd. I believe that President Biden is aware of this, this is merely a figure of speech to support his incorrect strategy against Russia.”

Putin added that Russia has no interest in fighting with NATO countries, as they “have no territorial claims against each other” and Russia does not want to “sour relations with them.” Moscow senses that a new US narrative is struggling to be born out of the debris of the old narrative on Ukraine war.

To jog memory, on 24 February, during a White House press conference on the first day of Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine, Biden said western sanctions were designed not to prevent invasion but to punish Russia after invading “so the people of Russia know what he (Putin) has brought on them. That is what this is all about.”

A month later, on 26 March Biden, speaking in Warsaw, blurted out, “For God’s sake, this man (Putin) cannot remain in power.” These and similar remarks that followed, especially from Britain, reflected a US strategy for regime change in Moscow, with Ukraine as the pivot.

This strategy dates back to the 1990s and was actually at the core of the expansion of NATO along Russia’s borders, from the Baltics to Bulgaria. The Syrian conflict and covert activities of US NGOs to foment unrest in Russia were offshoots of the strategy. At least since 2015 after the coup in Kiev, CIA was overseeing a secret intensive training programme for elite Ukrainian special operations forces and other intelligence personnel. Succinctly put, the US set a trap for Russia to get it bogged down in a long insurgency, the presumption being the longer the Ukrainians can sustain the insurgency and keep Russian military bogged down, the more likely is the end of the Putin regime.

The crux of the matter today is that Russia defeated the US strategy and not only seized the initiative in the war but also rubbished the sanctions regime. The dilemma in the Beltway narrows down to how to keep Russia as an external enemy so that the West’s often fractious member states will continue to rally under US leadership.

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Amir Mortasawi (alias Afsane Bahar) (امیر مرتضوی (افسانه بهار

Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia. By M. K. Bhadrakumar (December 19, 2023)

Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia

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Ukraine joins NATO’s Arctic projects against Russia

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