— NATO hasn’t admitted a new member adjacent to the Russian border since 2004.
— To the protest of several NATO members, Clinton offered Russia NATO membership, but the Kremlin would not join unless it could lead NATO. (I was against this, but was in Moscow when Clinton offered NATO membership to the Russian Federation)
— Anyone can apply, but admission to NATO requires 100% agreement and vote of current member nations.
— Ukraine did go through the NATO “MAP” process, but didn’t apply for NATO membership until after Russia took Crimea and orchestrated the offensive in Donbas.
— Those actions roughly doubled the percentage of Ukrainian’s desiring NATO membership to give/take 67-70%, similar to the 73% percent who voted for Zelensky’s anti-foreign corruption/anti-destabilization corruption strategies long externally used to subordinate and control Ukraine’s resources and force dependency.
— During the formal SSR cold war, the distance between the USSR and NATO was literally from about 4 inches to about 150’ft.
The Warsaw Pact had been subordinated, enslaved, and crushed by Moscow, while their geography was the staging ground for multiple bloodbaths, staging for roughly 250,000 pieces of armor and artillery, and included many of Moscows 55,000 nuclear warheads.
The former Warsaw Pact countries had no choice, as it was decided at Yalta (WWII), these would be gifted to Stalin, ultimately by team Roosevelt.
— Ukraine’s NATO desperation has been rejected by several NATO nations.
— Ukraine has for the same reason similarly been kept from the EU.
After seeing multiple canvass results a over the years, (as well as being exposed to a cross section of Ukrainian’s), it really is not that Ukrainian’s want EU liberalism/leftism/socialism or what many Ukrainian’s correctly identify as EU moral collapse and perversion. Ukraine is that much more fearful of the Russian Federation and the Kremlin, with many angered by CIS forced involvement in Georgia, and Syria, and not wanting to be under the influence of Beijing’s CCP. I have seen this in actual studies, multiple times.
As well, it’s not that NATO members hate UA, but more they are really fearful of Moscows large 9 member, 22.5 Million sq km CIS, with its Beijing/Tehran axis.
*This is an important point, as NATO membership requires unanimous agreement among current NATO members. UA has long been rejected by NATO members, precisely to keep the Texas sized buffer. No such buffer existed between NATO Europe and the USSR for close to 45 years.*
In all reality, NATO is in chaos with normal US leadership completely AWOL, the NATO collective having almost no significant Army, and all major NATO countries dependent on RU energy, albeit coming to an end in the next 1-3 years largely.
Ironically, if and when the Russian Federation and its subordinate CIS re-takes and re-subordinates Ukraine and it’s entire energy trends, it is actually Russia which will have eliminated such the Texas sized Ukrainian buffer zone with NATO, pushing formal subordinate CIS jurisdiction and battle space right up against NATO.
WHEN one becomes literate to how NATO admits members, and has formally rejected UA, the UA buffer still goes away, but actually due to Putin, not NATO.
Putin’s NATO argument is less valuable than the toilet paper it has been repeatedly printed on.
The President of the United States said it was US and NATO policy to have Georgia and UKRAINE join NATO.
Attempts to spin and argue otherwise are silly.