In the aftermath of WW II in April 1949, NATO began with the twelve countries on both sides of the North Atlantic: – the UK, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, the United States, Belgium, Canada, Italy, Portugal, Norway, Denmark, and Iceland in support of international cooperation without territorial expansion.
Russia, which received credit for the final defeat of the German Army in Berlin was not invited to join. Russia lost 27 million citizens in the Great Patriotic War with the 1944 Battle of Leningrad lasting 874 days and took the lives of 800,000 civilians; the Battle of Stalingrad claimed two million before Soviet soldiers went on to liberate Europe.
The collapse of the Soviet Union occurred in 1991 in response to a series of destabilizing effects including chronic economic stagnation, the unsustainable financial burden of the arms race, foreign conflicts and intense ethnic nationalism; somewhat akin to current struggles the US is currently experiencing.
In December 1991, Boris Yeltsin, President of Russia, sent a letter to NATO asking it to consider accepting Russia as a member of the alliance sometime in the future.
Yeltsin wrote a “long-term political goal” that “would contribute to an atmosphere of mutual understanding and trust and would strengthen stability and cooperation on the European continent.”
In January 1994, Russian president Boris Yeltsin is said to have told his American counterpart Bill Clinton in Novo-Ogaryovo: “Russia has to be the first country to join NATO. Then the others from Central and Eastern Europe can come in.”
In 1996, Vladimir Putin had risen to the rank of Lt. Colonel in the KGB and moved to Moscow in pursuit of political ambitions to join the administration of President Boris Yeltsin.
Putin became Secretary of the Security Council of Russia and was appointed Prime Minister in 1996 reporting to Yeltsin until his resignation. In March 2000, Putin was elected to his first term as President and re-elected in 2004.
Due to a Constitutional limit of two terms, Putin served as Prime Minister to President Dmitry Medvedev and was elected President in 2018. A process to create a Constitutional amendment was held in 2020 which allowed Putin to run for two more six year terms allowing extension for his term of office until 2036.
In April 2007, NATO’s European allies supported a NATO Missile Defense System without Russian participation. In response to a March 2009 suggestion by Polish foreign minister Radosław Sikorski that Russia join NATO, the Russian envoy to NATO, Dmitry Rogozin, said that Russia had not ruled it out, but preferred to continue co-operation with NATO.
He emphasized that “Great powers don’t join coalitions, they create coalitions. Russia considers itself a great power”
Anders Fogh Rasmussen said in 2019 that “Once Russia can show it is upholding democracy and human rights, NATO can seriously consider its membership.”
In a 2019 interview with Time Magazine, Sergey Karaganov a close advisor to Putin, said that not inviting Russia to join NATO was “one of the worst mistakes in political history,” arguing that it “put Russia and the West on a collision course, eventually sacrificing Ukraine.”
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It was of special attention that NATO added three Baltic countries to its roster in March, 2004; all of which directly border on Russia. They were Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which were once part of Russia.
Also joining NATO that day were four other eastern European countries: Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.
It was the single largest daily expansion of NATO especially focused on the Baltic region and eastern European countries most geographically and politically sensitive to security concerns and NATO authority.
Putin said in May 2005, “I do not really understand exactly how … the expansion of NATO to take in our Baltic neighbors can bring greater security. If other former Soviet republics want to join NATO, our attitude will remain the same. But I want to stress that we will respect their choice because it is their sovereign right to decide their own defense policy and this will not worsen relations between our countries”.
At the 43rd Munich Security Conference in February 2007, Putin asserted that Russia would no longer accept a subordinate role in international affairs with “… the relationship between Russia and NATO must be clarified and further developed before Ukraine can join NATO. Otherwise, NATO will be an enemy to Russia.”
In addition, “NATO has put its frontline forces on our borders … a serious provocation that reduces the level of mutual trust”.
During the 1990 – early 2000s, Russia made a serious effort to participate as it joined the Partnership for Peace program in 1994, followed by the NATO-Russian Founding Act in 1997 replaced by the NATO-Russia Council Act In 2002 and followed by the Orange Revolution in Ukraine in 2005.
It was Putin’s Munich Speech in 2007 that brought him to international attention in which Putin condemned NATO’s eastward expansion.
With NATO membership open to any “European State in a position to further the principles of this Treaty and to contribute to the security of the North Atlantic area,” NATO expanded in 1999 to include Poland, Czechia and Hungary but never included Russia.
There is every reason to believe that since Russia was denied NATO membership, the surge of new Baltic and eastern European members created a climate of concern and foreboding within Russia.
Some may identify a similarity as the United States struggles to find a balanced budget and retain a balanced approach to foreign policy without entering into armed conflict.
Despite newly elected President, Trump campaigned on ending the Ukraine War in ‘one day’ in the belief he could easily accomplish the task without serious effort and did not understand the nature of a US proxy war.
If Trump thought he understood what was required to resolve conflicts, he failed to recognize the need for a strong will and political determination required to complete the task.
Without rehashing the last four years of US indecisiveness and CIA-Pentagon behind the scenes support for Ukraine, the EU saw an opening and believed they had an opportunity to wade into the Ukraine quagmire without adequate military forces or a healthy economy to participate in a war that should be of no concern to Europe.
In February, 2022, President Putin announced the Special Military Operation citing Article 51 of the UN (right to self defense) and that Russian speaking regions of Donbas and Lugansk have “for eight years now, have been facing humiliation and genocide perpetrated by the Kyiv regime.”
Former UK Prime Minister’s Boris Johnson’s role intercession at the Istanbul Conference on half of the collective west has received wide attention.
The SMO served as a minimum military force to defend those oblasts in a civil war since 2014 with Ukraine government.
It was not coincidental when Sweden and Finland applied to join NATO in May 2022 transforming the Baltic Sea into “a NATO lake.” Since then, confrontation with Russia raised tensions to new heights.
As NATO, an instrument of US foreign policy, expanded to the east with every passing year, the situation for Russia became more dangerous as the leadership of NATO talked openly about the need to increase its presence.
And in September 2022, months after the start of Russia’s SMO in Ukraine, the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines from Russia to western European exploded.
In 2024, Latvia accelerated its NATO presence in response to Russia’s opposition to NATO on its border with Ukraine. Latvia and the Baltic nations took Russia’s opposition to NATO as a threat rather than protecting its own sovereignty.
The EU has imposed excessive economic restrictions on Russia including twenty-two sanction packages since 2022, has blocked shipment of Russian LNG and oil to Europe and called for an immediate ceasefire.
In addition, the EU has adopted sanctions against Belarus, Iran and North Korea in view of their support for Russia in the conflict with Ukraine, citing what it calls Russia’s ‘war of aggression’.
The EU sanctions included 4600 individuals beginning with Putin, Lavrov, members of the Duma, Ministers, Governors and local politicians including assorted institutions, businesspeople, banks and high ranking government officials.
Today’s deliberate misunderstanding of Russia’s intention inexplicably blinded by Europe‘s failure to understand Russia’s need for border security remains a barrier to finding peaceful dialogue with its neighbors as NATO’s role continues to foment controversy and hostility with Russia as the aggressor.
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More recently, the President of Norway Jonas Stoere and President of Finland Alexander Stuff participated in a 90 minute phone call directly with Russian President Vladimir Putin in a broad diplomatic effort to resolve the Ukraine war.
In what was described as a ‘frank and substantive’ conversation with the two countries that border Russia within its geographic sphere, it is said that the Russian response cited the EU and NATO’s ‘confrontational policy’ that has pointed to a “protraction of hostilities.”
Putin welcomed the contact, describing it as a step toward establishing “some kind of constructive dialogue” as well as lecturing his counterparts on Russian and Slavic history.
“We do not want, we are not preparing for any war with Europe,” he said. “We are ready even now to negotiate and seek solutions to this difficult, complicated situation,” Putin said. “Everything can be agreed upon.”
He described Ukrainians as a people closely related to Russians, pointing to genetic research that has shown they are “one people.”
Stubb admitted that the conversation had been worthwhile. “The discussion was frank and substantive. We are neighboring countries to Russia. The outcome of this war will have a direct impact on our and the broader European security. Ending the war requires direct discussions.”
The call served as a wake up call to their EU counterparts that peace takes a willingness to each out, communicate and effort. It was emphasized that achieving a just and long-term peace is possible only if the legitimate interests of the Russian Federation are fully and unconditionally taken into account.
Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby warned countries to urge an Estonian delegation to be “measured” in its public communications and have been more hawkish on Russia than most of their NATO counterparts.
In a lesson of learning to grasp the obvious, the EU fails to understand Russia’s need for border security in following a policy of unanimity, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said the initiative had not been coordinated with other European countries; Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said he was not informed in advance.
Moreover, due to a lack of strategic experience, Europeans are beginning to deny their own geography and to recognize that Russia is on the continent alongside them, a resource laden country with a multitude of the world’s natural resources, an immutable part of the foreign policy system.
While western Europeans lack military resources, technological capabilities, strategic thinking, and awareness of their own interests comparable to those of the Americans, qualities that enable them to weigh causes and consequences, to discern what is achievable and what is not by military means, and to identify where their bloc’s interests lie in this crisis.
Further, Russia referred to NATO expansion in western Europe which Putin has called the ‘root cause’ of the war citing the need for withdrawal of NATO troops from Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Finland.
Foreign Minister Lavrov “the Europeans want to insert themselves into the negotiation process” adding that “What matters is not what the Europeans want, but what added value they can actually bring to the table.”
In addition, Lavrov added that France, and Germany also failed to ensure that Ukraine implemented political reforms and granted special status to Donbass under the 2014-2015 Minsk agreements which they helped broker.
“Over the past 12 years, they have had more than enough opportunities. Through their actions, they have demonstrated that their track record cannot be ignored the next time they seek to act as ‘guarantors,’” Lavrov stated.