Ayn Marx wrote on Mar 25^th, 2022 at 7:51pm:

Enquiring mind wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 2:06am:


You denying it? I accepted the sources relating to the US secretary of state's  conversations with Putin after the demise of the USSR.   

Lisa Jones wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 11:14am:


Show me where I have "changed the goal posts".

Oh, and what your solution to the never ending wars in the age of MAD is, not to mention climate change and endemic global poverty. 

thegreatdivide wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 11:11am:


I most certainly am. Putin HIMSELF said he did not apply to join NATO. He said, and I quote, he "wasn't going to join a list of nothing countries".

Take it up with Dear Leader, dear.

Enjoy!

Enquiring mind wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 11:22am:


So was it Yeltsin? Either way Russia would have been open to joining NATO at the time, because Russia did express interest in the idea.
So the rejection by the West resulted in the hardliners in Russia taking over,  including Putin at that time, according to you

Quote:


See above.

Enquiring mind wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 11:22am:


Invited to join NATO and applying to join NATO are not the same, as everi Paki schoolboy knows.



Vladimir Putin wanted Russia to join Nato but did not want his country to have to go through the usual application process and stand in line “with a lot of countries that don’t matter”, according to a former secretary general of the transatlantic alliance.

George Robertson, a former Labour defence secretary who led Nato between 1999 and 2003, said Putin made it clear at their first meeting that he wanted Russia to be part of western Europe. “They wanted to be part of that secure, stable prosperous west that Russia was out of at the time,” he said.

The Labour peer recalled an early meeting with Putin, who became Russian president in 2000. “Putin said: ‘When are you going to invite us to join Nato?’ And [Robertson] said: ‘Well, we don’t invite people to join Nato, they apply to join Nato.’ And he said: ‘Well, we’re not standing in line with a lot of countries that don’t matter.’”

The account chimes with what Putin told the late David Frost in a BBC interview shortly before he was first inaugurated as Russian president more than 21 years ago. Putin told Frost he would not rule out joining Nato “if and when Russia’s views are taken into account as those of an equal partner”.

He told Frost it was hard for him to visualise Nato as an enemy. “Russia is part of the European culture. And I cannot imagine my own country in isolation from Europe and what we often call the civilised world.”

issuevoter wrote on Mar 26^th, 2022 at 12:16pm:

Yes. Partition is the only viable exit from this mess.

Eastern Ukraine would be ultimately ungovernable from Kiev. There are ethnic Russians who would not be up for Ukrainian rule (as they already are not). Partition seems to be the realpolitik outcome. That may be a bitter pill to swallow for Ukraine, but it would end the future decades of Russian uprisings in the east that they would be required to put down.

And one thing's for certain: Europe would not welcome Ukraine into the EU or NATO if it was fighting an internal eastern war of attrition with Ukrainian-Russians that had no end - just regular reports of atrocities over years.

My latest war thoughts.

I hope the Ukrainian army doesn’t allow the Russians to leave
from around Kiev and escape to Belarus.
That would be letting war criminals get away.
They need to block the roads – cut off supplies of: ammunition, fuel and food.
They need to round them up and either kill them or capture them
for slave labour to rebuild Ukraine.
Those in charge should be put on trial and hanged in public for war crimes.
There needs to be some justice in this world.