“Somebody forgot to tell Biden:”
Nice try. The link you included is from 2021; Zelensky made his comment in 2022.
And, you are WAY off on your claim that the US was planning
to make Sevastopol a NATO base, and that’s why Russia grabbed it. Your problem — one among many — is that Russia invaded Crimea in February, 2014 and annexed Crimea a few weeks later in March, 2014. The report you cited is from July, 2017 and addresses the plan to update port facilities near ODESSA. That was more than THREE YEARS after Russia had invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea.
You are so desperate to prove your pro-Kremlin bona fides that you have resorted to distortion and outright lies.
Give it up.
No, the POINT IS that Biden made that statement BEFORE the 2022 invasion at the same time Putin was insisting that Ukraine not be admitted to NATO. That is why I chose the statement made BEFORE the invasion. Why do you think Putin finally resorted to the military option after trying everything else?
Yes, Zelensky said he would forego NATO membership in 2022 when he was wanting to negotiate rather than have this war — but we said no to negotiations. And Z had grown jaded re promises of official NATO membership that had never panned out, too. We kept dancing that carrot, but never delivered.
What has been said after the invasion is not germane to subject under discussion: why Putin invaded, and when Putin at last resorted to the military option, he began with the lowest rung on the escalation ladder once one has climbed to military intervention with his tiny force called a “special operation”.
But, as you illogically seem to think what was said *after* the invasion has anything to with the subject at hand (why the invasion and why begun as it was), yes, we doubled down on pledging that Ukraine would become a NATO member, repeating it several times since the invasion:
Headline: NATO renews membership vow to Ukraine, pledges arms and aid
Date: November 29, 2022
Link: https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-putin-nato-europe-romania-4b073dd620cad097f22106e6a29c859c
BTW, I wrote “doubled down” before looking up a link for proof, and found it amusing the journo had also used that phrase. I notice you never provide any proof of your assertions.
No, I am not way off. I closely followed all this back in 2014. Obviously, you did not.
***Can you not read???*** I wrote we started building that naval base AFTER Putin grabbed Crimea! Yes, in 2017! Does it matter whether that article was three months or three years after Putin snagged Crimea? It has nothing whatsoever to do with the loose talk of making Sebastopol into a NATO naval base before Putin grabbed it in 2014. And of course it was near ODESSA! They couldn’t exactly build in Putin’s Crimea, could they?
You seem to be challenged on cause/effect. On both counts above. Cause comes before effect. You seem to think things can cause something to happen in the past.
To make it simple, I repeat: There was loose talk going around about turning Sevastopol into a NATO naval base in 2014 BEFORE Putin grabbed Crimea. This talk very likely factored into Putin’s decision to grab it. He may have grabbed it anyway, without the loose talk, because he feared this would happen if Ukraine succeeded to NATO membership in the future. So he opportunistically grabbed it while he had the chance. After Putin put the kibosh on that scheme, we built a naval base near Odessa. Which served as a NATO port hosting NATO exercises in the Black Sea. To say nya-nya and neener-neener to Putin. And to highlight that we considered Ukraine a de facto junior member of NATO.*
I have not lied, as you falsely accuse. You have either lied by deliberately misrepresenting my post, or else you are mentally confused about timelines and the fact that cause precedes effect, not the other way round. You owe me an apology, but I gather from your tactics that you are not man to enough to do that. I normally give people the benefit of the doubt, that there has simply been a misunderstanding or misreading. But when someone starts with the false accusations and insults as you have, well, that goes out the window.
*We were obviously using Ukraine as a de facto NATO member, taking advantage of it. We held NATO exercises there, both on land and sea. So Ukraine got the risk involved, but not the defense guarantee. We kinda used them, eh? Provoked Russia on their territory, but did not formally pledge to defend it with our own blood. They got benefits, though: we were arming, equipping and training their military. And moola, lots of moola. The neocons got the benefit of getting to goad the Russians into a proxy war with NATO, but without the risk of having to spill American blood once Putin had enough.