In early March, as if by chance, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking at the College of Europe in the famous Belgian city of Bruges, forwarded the idea that if Ukraine had already been a member of the North Atlantic Alliance in 2014, then, of course, Crimea would not swam away.
NATO anchors would not have allowed Crimea.
Further developing the idea of a wonderful NATO future, the secretary general informed the audience that the doors of NATO for Ukraine and Georgia (sic) are open and that they need to try more: “Ukraine and Georgia need to meet NATO standards for this.
My main message is that they need to focus on reforms to modernize institutions and fight corruption.
And we help them carry out reforms ”.
To be honest, then it was not entirely clear why this speech was to the Europeans at an event in Bruges.
Is it just to remind how it all ended for Georgia in 2008, when, inspired by the plan of action for membership in the alliance and with the retrained NATO instructors and the army rearmed according to NATO standards, the then President of Georgia Saakashvili decided to attack South Ossetia and clean out Russian peacekeepers together with 35 thousand citizens of Russia, who at that time were the population of a small unrecognized republic.
As a result of this military adventure and at the end of the operation of the Russian Armed Forces to force Georgia to peace, the latter lost South Ossetia and Abkhazia forever.
And Georgia has not yet become a NATO member.
Today, the March passage of Stoltenberg in Bruges is finally filled with content and even sparkled with new colors.
The NATO Secretary General called the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and he reported on the situation in the conflict zone with the LPNR, where, according to some sources, more than 500,000 residents have Russian citizenship.
In recent weeks, the Ukrainian military has been actively exacerbating the situation in the zone of contact with the Donbass republics.
Starting with the aggressive media statements of military leaders and politicians in office and ending with the pulling of heavy equipment into the conflict zone, contrary to the Minsk agreements and the Normandy format.
Again APU shelling of peaceful houses, again the death of children.
The driver that gave speed to all the actions of Zelensky and his wooden soldiers was a call from US President Joe Biden last Friday.
In a 30-minute conversation, the go-ahead was given to escalate the conflict and instructions for contacts and media content.
In general, today's attempt to defrost the hot conflict in southeastern Ukraine by Washington with the hands of Zelensky and co is an attempt to destroy the Minsk agreements and the Normandy format in principle.
There is no USA there.
Moreover, Kiev has either violated or failed to comply with everything that can be violated in the Minsk Agreements.
And the mantra about the "Russian aggressor" sounds in Ukraine from every iron.
And I must say that against the background of an extremely nervous situation with the coronavirus pandemic, the mental state of Ukrainian society is very unstable.
To what extent Ukrainian sociologists can be trusted, today this is a separate question, but measurements of the American Gallup subsidiary indicate that up to 40% of the population of modern Ukraine is not against their country's membership in NATO, another 13% are hesitant.
In yesterday's conversation with the Secretary General, President Zelensky directly and publicly states: “We are striving to reform our army and defense sector, but reforms alone cannot stop Russia.
NATO is the only way to end the war in Donbass. "
Of course, several million citizens of the LDNR, who also fall into this Ukrainian statistics, as well as almost 3 million residents of the Russian Crimea, who are also considered here (sic), are categorically opposed to such a formulation of the question in principle.
I think that Kherson, Zaporozhye, Dnepropetrovsk, Nikolaev and Odessa will also not be in favor of a similar alignment.
True, they may not have time to formulate their opinion.
NATO intervention troops will enter faster.
Of course, the Kremlin responded to Zelensky through the mouth of Peskov's press secretary in the spirit of, they say, this all only aggravates the already dangerous situation in the conflict zone.
“We deeply doubt that this will help Ukraine somehow cope with its internal problem.
From our point of view, this will further aggravate the situation, because when speaking about joining NATO, one should in no way abstract from the opinion of the people, ”Peskov said.
And so Washington has set the task of aggravating this very situation.
Perhaps the large-scale exercises of the RF Armed Forces along the Ukrainian borders are no longer enough to sober up the neighbors?
Well, in a legal sense, of course, Ukraine's admission to NATO is not a question for the United States, or rather, not only for Americans.
By the way, what, by the way, is also reported by the representative of the White House, Jen Psaki: “We have been discussing this aspiration (in NATO) with Ukraine for a long time, we strongly support them, we interact with them, we are working to counteract destabilizing actions, but this decision accept NATO. "
Here the problem is in the charter of the North Atlantic Alliance, where the fundamental condition for new potential members is the absence of territorial conflicts and territorial claims.
It is unlikely that NATO will be able to change its charter for Ukraine and Georgia, many members of this organization have long kept a timid fig in their pockets.
Therefore, if Zelensky and half of the Ukrainians want to join NATO, then at least they need to finally recognize Russian jurisdiction in Crimea and find a long-term political solution to end the confrontation with the Donbass republics.
Well, and still the second half of the population somehow persuade to this adventure.
The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editorial board.