Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, in a conversation with reporters, announced NATO’s plans to create an alliance mission in Ukraine.

“We decided to create a NATO mission. This does not mean that we are entering a war; rather, we will be able to use NATO’s potential in matters of coordination, training and planning for more effective assistance to Ukraine,” the press service of the Polish Foreign Ministry quotes Sikorski as saying.

In Russia, the decision of the North Atlantic bloc was called the “creeping penetration” of the alliance into Ukraine, which is taking official forms. This was stated, in particular, by the head of the Federation Council Commission on Information Policy and Interaction with the Media, Alexey Pushkov, on his Telegram page.

“Mission first. Then coordination. Then study. Then training. Then involvement. This is the logic of the process,” Pushkov noted.

According to him, Warsaw, which announces the creation of a NATO mission, is pursuing a line of “thinly veiled support” for French President Emmanuel Macron’s plan to send alliance troops to Ukrainian territory.

“This (line.

- RT

) so as not to cause irritation with the excessive independence of Poland in the United States, as well as direct disagreement on the part of Berlin, Rome, Madrid and some other capitals of NATO countries. Prime Minister (Poland Donald.

- RT

) Tusk is silent on this matter, but Foreign Minister Sikorski persistently substantiates this plan. We can probably talk about an already established French-Polish tandem of adherents of NATO’s institutional participation in the military conflict in Ukraine,” Pushkov believes.

Positions in the West

Let us recall that on February 26, during a press conference at the Elysee Palace following the summit on military support for Ukraine, Emmanuel Macron said that at a meeting in Paris with the participation of representatives of a number of Western countries, the topic of the possible dispatch of troops to Ukraine was raised. According to him, the parties have not reached a consensus on this issue, but such a scenario cannot be ruled out in the future.

After this, the authorities of several Western countries, including the United States, Germany and Great Britain, stated that they did not plan to send their military personnel to Ukraine. In turn, Alliance Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, speaking on Polish television, also announced that there are no plans of the North Atlantic bloc to station NATO combat units on Ukrainian territory. At the same time, he called on members of the bloc to increase support for Kyiv through more intensive weapons tranches. Stoltenberg believes that the only way to “get a stable peace in Ukraine” is to have “strong armed forces there and not let” Russia win.

  • NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg

  • AP

  • © Johanna Geron

However, on April 4, in an article for the UnHerd Internet portal, Pentagon and US State Department consultant Edward Luttwak wrote that NATO would still have to send troops to Ukraine, since Kyiv does not have enough military personnel. Otherwise, he said, the alliance would be forced to accept a “catastrophic defeat.” In addition, according to Luttwak, Britain, France, as well as the Nordic countries are already secretly preparing to send their troops.

At the same time, former deputy head of NATO Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo said on the same day in an interview with The Sun newspaper that sending NATO troops to Ukraine could lead to the start of a “new world war.”

“You can defend, but not attack. If NATO sends troops to Ukraine, it will change the course of the war... If you send NATO troops to Ukraine, you will only encourage Russia to fight more intensely... And there is always the threat of a new world war. I don’t think it will start, but you never know. Therefore, it is better to strictly adhere to the rules,” the former deputy head of NATO emphasized.

Despite these kinds of warnings, in an interview with the Ukrainian newspaper Evropeiskaya Pravda, Norwegian Foreign Minister Espen Bart Eide allowed troops to be sent to Ukraine, albeit “in a very long term.”

"Almost impossible to hide"

As RISI expert Sergei Ermakov noted in a commentary to RT, the statement by the Polish Foreign Ministry about plans to create a NATO mission in Ukraine indicates that the bloc is making concrete efforts to give legitimacy to the presence of NATO military personnel on Ukrainian territory.

“Now it is almost impossible to hide the fact that representatives of the alliance member countries are in Ukraine. Thus, when making statements about the creation of the bloc’s mission, they are making attempts to put all this into some kind of digestible form, as it seems to NATO representatives. At the same time, the Polish Foreign Ministry deliberately shifts the emphasis, saying that military blocs will appear on the territory of Ukraine, allegedly for the purpose of training the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The alliance is trying to increase support for Ukraine, but does not want to bear any responsibility for this,” Ermakov said.

According to him, despite the fact that there is no formal consensus in NATO on the issue of sending troops to the territory of Ukraine, there is a gradual involvement of the bloc in an armed conflict.

“Although Warsaw declares that the NATO mission will not have an offensive function, in fact it may have tools of a hybrid nature when the alliance is indirectly involved in the conflict. The point is that the bloc’s military takes on the functions of planning operations, partly their implementation, preparing the Armed Forces of Ukraine, including their sabotage actions directed against Russia,” the expert explained.

However, for now, “NATO members are afraid of getting officially and directly involved in a conflict with Russia,” Ermakov emphasized.

“Although it is no secret that individual representatives of NATO countries, who act as military advisers, instructors, coordinators, including through the intelligence community, are already operating on the territory of Ukraine and their activity has had and is having a serious disruptive impact on the course of the conflict. And this is in addition to the mercenaries who have already fought or are fighting as part of units of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In fact, we are talking about the fact that NATO countries are thus contributing to the prolongation of the conflict, its growth and escalation,” the analyst is sure.

Ermakov believes that the alliance states will continue to send their representatives and advisers to the territory of Ukraine, but on a more, as it seems to them, legitimate basis - within the framework of the NATO mission.

“At the same time, they will try to carry out most of the operations under a foreign flag, hiding behind the fact that it is supposedly the Ukrainian military personnel themselves who carry out and plan everything. Now we are seeing in dynamics how the escalation continues. And the increasingly aggressive statements of individual Western politicians about the creation of a NATO mission are certainly alarming,” the expert said.

As Ermakov explained, NATO countries do not dare to openly send troops and hide behind the bloc’s mission, because they are aware of the power of Russia and its armed forces.

“In the West they fear a direct clash with the Russian Armed Forces. Therefore, NATO will continue to take an extremely crafty position when certain high-ranking representatives of the alliance member countries make provocative statements about the likelihood of the deployment of alliance troops, and at the level of the bloc’s secretary general they will talk about NATO’s non-involvement in the conflict,” the analyst noted.

In turn, political scientist Vladimir Shapovalov, a member of the board of the Russian Association of Political Science, expressed the opinion that the statement by the Polish Foreign Ministry about plans to create a NATO mission in Ukraine is a direct consequence of the defeats suffered by the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Northern Military District zone.

“Under these conditions, the option of a proxy war, which Western countries had so much hoped for until now, has not demonstrated its effectiveness. But for Western countries, defeat in the confrontation with the Russian Federation is a very serious blow to their reputation. Under these conditions, the West is following the path of escalation of tension. The creation of the NATO mission is nothing less than the completely official beginning of the West's intervention in Ukraine and its participation in military operations against Russia. No matter how it is covered up by statements that the mission will not be directly related to military clashes in the Northern Military District zone,” the expert said in a commentary to RT.

  • NATO symbols

  • Gettyimages.ru

  • © Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu Agency

However, no matter what steps the collective West takes to continue the armed conflict, “Russia’s victory is inevitable,” Shapovalov is sure.

“And those military personnel of NATO countries who enter the territory of Ukraine as part of the bloc’s mission, or individual military contingents of certain alliance countries, for example France or Poland, will not be immune from attacks by the Russian Aerospace Forces and can easily be destroyed. Indeed, if NATO troops are present on the territory of Ukraine, they will become a completely legitimate target for the Russian armed forces,” the analyst concluded.